A review by premxs
Nazi Literature in the Americas by Roberto Bolaño

4.0

a few biographies into this book, I thought maybe I'd end up feeling dissatisfied with the incompleteness of the lives created for the sake of this tableau, that the curiosity about its movements and moments would get the better of me - but somehow (and herein lies Bolano's genius), I didn't. The pathos of these fictional authors and their terrifyingly real belief systems weave and clash and simmer and submerge with sweeps of passion, dull thuds of pain, and lashes of horrific self-assurance. It is the act of literary creation that is at the heart of this book, with all of its arrogance and excess and self-importance and tragedy. Ultimately, it is surprisingly profound, and as memorable for what it doesn't say as what it does.