chaseledin 's review for:

Distant Star by Roberto Bolaño

5.0

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Roberto Bolaño is a cunning writer. Between By Night in Chile and Distant Star, are triumphant and exceptional insights into the politico-artistic turmoil in Chile at the end of the 1970s, when the country experienced a devastating political shift to a totalitarian state occupation. Distant Star, in particular, recounts a group of writers through the establishment of the new regime, particularly their flight from the nation, and the narrator's devastating role in locating the infamous Carlos Weider. Though the writing is particularly bogged down with tangential histories, do not fret: it does lead somewhere, and the detractions are genuinely interesting outlets from the main plot, which is, by and large, to historicize and reveal the two faces of the poet and terrorist Carlos Weider. Distant Star is an exceptional historical and poetic account.