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jonfaith's review
4.0
The Lamb winked at me and sat on the bed, behind the maid, miming sex in a way that was doubly silent because even his ear-to-ear smile was turned not toward me or Clarita's back but toward... a kind of realm of stone... a silent zone. . .
This is a strange novel.
There's blinding sun in Costa Brava.
There are waves and wells of tourists.
It is seasonal. It is also the late 1980s.
The degrees and details ensnare the reader.
I felt myself transported and likewise confined. Despite our distractions, our esoterica, we remain under the penumbra of history. One shouldn't second-guess the author's intentions regarding the publication of this apparently first novel. The swarm of the quotidian and the ideological provide something less menacing (as was Distant Star) than the creepy. I am not sure what I mean by such unease. I have never been a beach person, the last time I reclined upon the sand amid the heat to read was sixteen years ago, reading Shelby Foote alongside one of the Great Lakes. I prefer to scowl and walk along the ocean, brooding about fetishism and the evolution of yawning as I might have done in Miami and in Morocco.
This is a strange novel.
There's blinding sun in Costa Brava.
There are waves and wells of tourists.
It is seasonal. It is also the late 1980s.
The degrees and details ensnare the reader.
I felt myself transported and likewise confined. Despite our distractions, our esoterica, we remain under the penumbra of history. One shouldn't second-guess the author's intentions regarding the publication of this apparently first novel. The swarm of the quotidian and the ideological provide something less menacing (as was Distant Star) than the creepy. I am not sure what I mean by such unease. I have never been a beach person, the last time I reclined upon the sand amid the heat to read was sixteen years ago, reading Shelby Foote alongside one of the Great Lakes. I prefer to scowl and walk along the ocean, brooding about fetishism and the evolution of yawning as I might have done in Miami and in Morocco.
mexscrabbler's review
3.0
My son gave me this book for Father's day, it is by the well-known author of The Savage Detectives and 2666. It was a good read, assuming you enjoy unusual, thought-provoking dialogue and don't mind the subject matter.
It concerns a German tourist who likes to play a board game called "The Third Reich", in which players get to recreate the war campaigns of WWII. On a trip to Spain the tourist runs across a strange individual named "El Quemado" (whose face is, in fact, burnt), and they develop a relationship that revolves around playing the game.
Odd things happen throughout that summer and the book creates a mysterious mood that is engaging.
The ending could have been better, but I still recommend it.
It concerns a German tourist who likes to play a board game called "The Third Reich", in which players get to recreate the war campaigns of WWII. On a trip to Spain the tourist runs across a strange individual named "El Quemado" (whose face is, in fact, burnt), and they develop a relationship that revolves around playing the game.
Odd things happen throughout that summer and the book creates a mysterious mood that is engaging.
The ending could have been better, but I still recommend it.
korrick's review against another edition
2.0
This is my fourth book of Bolaño, four being the current tipping point between authors I've sampled more than once and authors for whom I've demonstrated some level of commitment. Unfortunately, fancy covers and effusive reviews need not be explicit about publishing chronology or author bio, and had I known the posthumous conditions of this book's publication, I wouldn't have held onto it as long as I did. For what is here certainly has aesthetics of Bolaño, but very little of the gutpunch politicisms; in a word, this was lacking the thematic skeleton that enabled the linguistic skin to gird its loins before going into war. It's a difference between a death that happens and a death that means something, a paranoia that is little more than self entitlement and a double think that has saved one from the military industrial complex more than once, violence as shock and violence as endless reverberations from the disintegrating corpses of various juggernauts whose masquerading as various nations would have come to a close long ago were it not for the death grip certain fascist individuals have on their pride in the form of their respective nation's doomsday clocks. A disappointment, then, but then again, it was not Bolaño that chose to put this forth. So, if you, dear reader, are coming here with an eye on the accessibly slim contours of this work and a question of whether this is the best place to start: no, it is not. I have a good feeling, though, that [b:Nazi Literature in the Americas|1178230|Nazi Literature in the Americas|Roberto Bolaño|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348627738l/1178230._SX50_.jpg|1166037] would be worth a try if you're a stickler for length. I myself began my Bolaño journey with [b:2666|63032|2666|Roberto Bolaño|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1672791535l/63032._SY75_.jpg|3294830], but I'll leave that for the masochists among us.
ombraluce's review against another edition
4.0
Se non si sapesse che Il Terzo Reich è stato scritto nel 1989 ed è rimasto inedito fino al 2010 mentre Cocaine Nights di Ballard è del 1996, si potrebbe pensare che Bolaño è stato l'ispiratore di Ballard, e invece i due autori sono arrivati in maniera autonoma a descrivere la morte dell'anima.
Il giocatore di Bolaño è un postadolescente che cerca la propria identità attraverso un wargame che cerca di ribaltare gli avvenimenti storici. E' un campione del gioco, scrive articoli, è, nel suo ristretto ambito, una celebrità, e lui solo non vede il pericolo a cui va incontro, quello della fossilizzazione, della mancata crescita interiore.
Ci vorrà la solenne sconfitta da parte di un absolute beginner, che, ribadendo la realtà storica e facendogli temere le forche di Norimberga, lo costringerà a uscire dalla sua impasse esistenziale.
In questo Bolaño si rivela assai più ottimista di Ballard, per il quale il riscatto è sempre un fattore minoritario.
Il giocatore di Bolaño è un postadolescente che cerca la propria identità attraverso un wargame che cerca di ribaltare gli avvenimenti storici. E' un campione del gioco, scrive articoli, è, nel suo ristretto ambito, una celebrità, e lui solo non vede il pericolo a cui va incontro, quello della fossilizzazione, della mancata crescita interiore.
Ci vorrà la solenne sconfitta da parte di un absolute beginner, che, ribadendo la realtà storica e facendogli temere le forche di Norimberga, lo costringerà a uscire dalla sua impasse esistenziale.
In questo Bolaño si rivela assai più ottimista di Ballard, per il quale il riscatto è sempre un fattore minoritario.
lee_foust's review
5.0
Despite the fact that The Third Reich was an unfinished or at least unpublished MS of Bolano's, posthumously published and translated into English more for completeists than general readers, I'm going full five stars and favorite shelf for this bad boy. Ironically, I think I've been grousing a bit in recent reviews about novels I've found mediocre because they seemed to have no unifying theme or message, that their characters and narrative were their only reasons for existing and that such novels just aren't my cup of tea... Then along comes Bolano with this utterly mysterious but wonderfully bizarre narrative of a German couple's vacation on the Spanish coast dragging on and on into something both utterly strange and totally boring AT THE SAME TIME that I find completely riveting even if I have really no idea why. Go figure.
The closest I seem to be able to come right at this minute to explaining how compelling this novel about nothing (and perhaps everything) is, is to compare it to one of Kafka's novels. Like them, as Deleuze and Guattari so well explicate it in their Anti-Oedipus and Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature books, the novel becomes a kind of narrative machine. It's just not like other plotted novels and its unfamiliarity with novelistic conventions and the comfort that such conventions give complacent readers keeps one on the edge of one's seat--but for none of the reasons that novels usually get us to do that. Here it's because we're mystified and curious, unnerved really, because that narrative machine might just spit out anything tomorrow and it's fascinating. The oddest thing about such books is that they end--and even that is surprising.
Of Bolano's secondary, posthumous works I loved both this one and also the Little Lumpen Novelito. Both are unexpected minor masterpieces in my opinion.
The closest I seem to be able to come right at this minute to explaining how compelling this novel about nothing (and perhaps everything) is, is to compare it to one of Kafka's novels. Like them, as Deleuze and Guattari so well explicate it in their Anti-Oedipus and Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature books, the novel becomes a kind of narrative machine. It's just not like other plotted novels and its unfamiliarity with novelistic conventions and the comfort that such conventions give complacent readers keeps one on the edge of one's seat--but for none of the reasons that novels usually get us to do that. Here it's because we're mystified and curious, unnerved really, because that narrative machine might just spit out anything tomorrow and it's fascinating. The oddest thing about such books is that they end--and even that is surprising.
Of Bolano's secondary, posthumous works I loved both this one and also the Little Lumpen Novelito. Both are unexpected minor masterpieces in my opinion.
sabinereads's review
5.0
Gorgeously translated - Bolano imbues an irradiant, lazy summer on the Spanish coast with a disorienting measure of suspense. Must read more of his work.
klymko's review
4.0
I would really like to give this book 3.5 stars. I love Bolaño's writing and his voice, but parts of this book seemed to drag a bit to me. I couldn't get into the war game's aspect very well and the ending seemed a bit lacking to me.
awwarma's review against another edition
4.0
Have a blast of World War II romanticism in this book. More for that later...
paeandbooks's review
5.0
Memory, madness and post-war trauma masked in daily lives normalcy. I CAN FEEL MYSELF SPIRALLING, and the audiobook experience is not helping. Siyel.