Woes of the True Policeman - Hardcover

'His fiction was hallucinatory, haunting and experimental' Times Literary Supplement 'Bolano has proved [literature] can do anything' Scotsman '[Bolano] made each book more ambitious so that it will take us many years to come to terms with his vast achievement' Colm Toibin 'He has the natural storyteller's gift -- but more important, he has the power to lend an extraordinary glamour to the activities of making love and making poetry' Edmund White 'Bolano was one of those rare writers who write for a future time, and we, especially we in the Anglophone world, have only begun to appreciate his strange, oblique genius' John Banville 'Readers who have snacked on a writer such as Haruki Murakami will feast on Roberto Bolano' Sunday Times 'It's no exaggeration to call Bolano a genius' Washington Post 'Bolano makes you feel changed for having read him; he adjusts your angle of view on the world' Guardian 'We savour all he has written as every offering is a portal into the elaborate terrain of his genius' Patti Smith 'Bolano writes with such elegance, verve and style and is so immensely readable' Guardian

When Oscar Amalfitano begins an impulsive affair with one of his students at the University of Barcelona, he has no idea where it will lead. More than his turbulent revolutionary past, or the death of his beautiful wife, the scandalous exposure of this relationship will change him for ever. Forced to flee with his seventeen-year-old daughter, Amalfitano finds himself in Santa Teresa, a sprawling town on the US-Mexico border. Haunted by dark tales of murdered women, this mythical place is populated by mysterious characters. We meet Castillo, who makes his living selling his forgeries of Larry Rivers paintings to wealthy Texans; Pancho Monje, a son born of six generations of foundlings; and Arcimboldi, a magician and writer whose work has been important to Amalfitano for some time, but whose return to prominence is just beginning. Woes of the True Policeman is an exciting, kaleidoscopic novel, lyrical and intense yet darkly humorous. Exploring the limits of memory and the power of art, it returns to the world and characters of Bolano's masterpiece, 2666, and marks the culmination of one of the great careers of world literature.