The Name of a Bullfighter [Paperback]

Luis Sepulveda (Author)

Book Description

Series: Harvest in Translation | Publication Date: October 15, 1997

This “engrossing, thoughtful noir novel” (Publishers Weekly) pits a former South american Marxist guerrilla against an ex-Stasi agent in a race to uncover the truth about a cache of medieval coins stolen during World War II. Translated by Suzanne Ruta.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The Chilean expatriate novelist Luis Sepulveda, who scored a major hit in the Spanish-speaking world with his 1992 book The Old Man Who Read Love Stories, has concocted an adventure tale about a quest for missing Nazi gold. The main characters include a Chilean revolutionary named after a famous matador, a pair of former SS agents, and a Swiss insurance investigator; they meet up in the desolate reaches of Tierra del Fuego in their search for the Wandering Crescent Collection, a set of 63 priceless gold coins that disappeared from Nazi Germany in 1943. Sepulveda blends the tense adventure of a Frederic Forsyth novel with a Borgesian sensibility--and manages to pull it off. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Juan Belmonte, an unemployed Marxist guerrilla named for a famous bullfighter, is approached by an insurance agent to retrieve a cache of medieval gold coins, looted from the German treasury during World War II and stashed somewhere in Chile. The novel moves quickly from the sleaze of Hamburg and post-wall Berlin to the empty, anonymous spaces of the Chilean pampas and Tierra del Fuego. Sepulveda (The Old Man Who Read Love Stories, Harcourt, 1993) examines the sometimes sordid and violent lives and psyches of the various characters. The novel is intricately crafted and the action superbly suspenseful as Juan is chased halfway around the world by an unemployed former East German intelligence agent. Recommended for most collections.?Mary Margaret Benson, Linfield Coll. Lib., Mcminnville, Ore.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 228 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books (October 15, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0156005484
• ISBN-13: 978-0156005487
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 8 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,181,140 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hidden Treasure and Greed With Fun Twists of Humor, August 4, 2000

By 

"kingsransom" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Name of a Bullfighter (Paperback)

The book begins on an almost deserted road in Tierra del Feugo, where an old man receives a cryptic note of warning. The old man's past, and the actions which led him to flee to the Tierra del Feugo, have finally caught up with him. From there, the reader is taken to Hamburg, Germany. Juan Belmonte, constantly mistaken for a Turk by his neighbors, is a Chilean revolutionary in exile. One night a mysterious stranger and his ever faithful dog appear at Juan's place of work, a seedy strip club where Juan is the bouncer. Condescendingly summoned to a meeting set for the next day at a Hamburg insurance company, Juan immediately rebuffs the stranger. However, when he is fired from his bouncer job and his neighbors are petitioning to evict "the Turk," Juan decides that it is perhaps time for one more revolutionary-for-hire job, this one set in his native Chile. Meanwhile in Berlin, two former East German Stasi agents are also planning a trip to Chile..........

What follows is a suspenseful but always fun adventure. The action is fast paced and the plot is never slow. Although the tone of the book is sarcastic and the characters are satirized, a serious thread also runs through the book, notably the atrocities of the Pinochet regime and Chile's struggle to forget its dark past and focus and a new republic. For this as well as the character of Juan Belmonte, the author has drawn on his experience in exile during Chile's tumultuous period.

Altogether it is a fun little caper that is sure to be entertaining.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Masterpice of Sparse Suspense, May 17, 2001

By 

A. Ross (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Name of a Bullfighter (Paperback)

Sepulveda's sparse but gripping story combines noir's thematic treatment of the past as an inescapable albatross with the noir trope...being made offers they can't refuse. When the Berlin Wall comes down, the race is on to trade in secrets from the past and retrieve long-hidden treasures. A mysterious man in a wheelchair enlists an exiled former Chilean revolutionary/guerilla/terrorist to return to his homeland and recover a cache of gold coins stolen by, and then from... Meanwhile, an ex-Stasi officer convinces a down-and-out former underling to do the same. For both men , this is a chance to break free their depressing conditions and make a new start, albeit a carrot with a considerable stick in the wings. As others have pointed out, Sepulveda has the same gift as the French writer Emmanel Carrere for being able to build tension with a bare minimum of plot and exposition. The settings are vivid and contrasting, from a gritty and racist modern Germany reminiscent of Jakob Arjourni's books, to the remote tip of Chile, which has whispers of "Smilla's Sense of Snow." Underlying the basic thriller plot is a somewhat wistful and bitter questioning of the relevance and meaning of radical movements of the 70s and 80s in the post-Cold War era. Indeed the central metaphor of the race for the gold is that everyone in the book is trying to forget the past and make do in a world decidedly more interested in money than ideology.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb suspense - classy "private eye", February 2, 1998

By 

M. J. Smith (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Name of a Bullfighter (Paperback)

This book succeeds on the basis of the portrayal of two "losers" - one a former East German spy, the other a former Latin American terrorist. What are seemingly disparate threads are pulled together in a surprising but believable conclusion. A must-read for fans of The Man who Read Love Stories, fans of Emmanuel Carrere . . .