Nazi Literature in the Americas (Hardcover)

~ Roberto Bolaño (Author), Chris Andrews (Translator)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Amazon Significant Seven, February 2008: As with the emergence of W.G. Sebald into English a decade ago, the most exciting new writer to watch is one we're just catching up with: the late Roberto Bolaño, whose ground-breaking fiction defined a generation of Spanish-speaking literature. In between last year's thrillingly meandering epic, The Savage Detectives, and the upcoming alleged masterwork, 2666, comes a small and strange book (but no stranger than the rest), Nazi Literature in the Americas. Presented as a biographical encyclopedia of right-wing writers in North and South America, these short, invented lives are full of the stuff of minor literary scenes and forgotten books, with delusion and creation mixed in equal fashion. Funny, melancholy, surprisingly tender, and--once in a while--erupting into fury, Bolaño spins out tale after tale with the joy of sheer invention and the burden of inescapable history. --Tom Nissley

From Publishers Weekly

The title chosen by Bolaño (1953–2003) for this slim, fake encyclopedia is not wholly tongue-in-cheek: given the very real presence of former (and not-so-former) Nazis in Latin America following WWII, this book, despite being fiction, still had j'accuse-like power when first published in 1996. The poets described herein, though invented, seem—even at their most absurd—plausible, which is the secret to this sly book's devastating effect. And as one proceeds from an entry on Edelmira Thompson de Mendiluce (In high spirits, Edelmira asked for the Führer's advice: which would be the most appropriate school for her sons?) to one on Carlos Ramírez Hoffman (His passage through literature left a trail of blood and several questions posed by a mute), it becomes clear that there is a single witness to all of these terrible figures, one who has spent time in one of Pinochet's prisons and is bent on coolly totting up the crimes of fascism's literary perpetrators. Some readers will recognize figures and episodes from Bolaño's other books (including The Savage Detectives and Distant Star). The wild inventiveness of Bolaño's evocations places them squarely in the realm of Borges—another writer who draws enormous power from the movement between the fictive and the real. (Feb.)
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 280 pages
• Publisher: New Directions (February 17, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811217051
• ISBN-13: 978-0811217057
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #312,379 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

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24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Neo-Nazism in the Americas, February 25, 2008

By	Daniel Schmidt (Norfolk, VA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

To preface: As we all know, Roberto Bolano passed away in 2003. Like many in America, New Directions let us in on the secret with "By Night In Chile" and "Distant Star" (which is actually an elaboration of the final story in "Nazi Literature in the Americas"). Next came "Last Evenings on Earth" and "Amulet" last year. "The Savage Detectives" came out via Farrar, Straus and Giroux last year as well and, his masterpiece, "2666" is on its way. If you haven't read any of these, it doesn't matter what order, just read any and all.

"Nazi Literature in the Americas" reads like a history (but not in a bad way). Bolano creates dozens of personalities, each with intricite details and interesting character traits that even a third-party (Bolano) can convey gently. Each character exists throughout North and South America in the twentieth-century, some not dying until 2040 (which Bolano uses to hint that these people still exist into the later twenty-first century).

As the title suggests, each character is tied, in Bolano fashion, to fascist literary movements in their respective time period and country. Edelmira Thompson de Mendiluce, the first chronicled in the novel, is a bourgeois Argentine who met Hitler in the 1930's and was sympathetic to the cause ever since. Max Mirebalais, is a poor Haitian who steals from other European poets and crafts "many masks," which he uses to create an ideology of hate. Argentino Schiaffino is a thug from Buenos Aires who loves soccer and violence and believes in the heirarchy of races and is on the run most of his life for murder.

One gets the point. The problem is, this doesn't half convey the textual density and complexity of the work. The way the characters interact within each others stories, how one influences the other, etc. The depth that Bolano went through to create this world is astonishing (as his epilogue with a glossary of names, places, publishers, books, and miniture biographies of minor characters in the stories).

The beauty, in the end, is that each is not a celebrate of Hitler or Aryan supremacy. Most are misguided and some are playing games even with themselves. The real world is ever present in Bolanos world and the presence of these characters moving, most of the time at odds with the real world, is fascinating. The trick is that each characters intolerance is shown in different ways - not directed at Hitler or other fascist leaders, but in the culture of fascism that still exists today - even as it did in 1996 when this novel was published.

I cannot recommend this more highly. I was anticipating it greatly and I was not let down. The only problem for avid readers of Bolano, is the final chapter, "The Infamous Ramirez Hoffman" is the shortened version of his previous novel "Distant Star," which he does allude to at the beginning of that work. But taken separately, the shortened version does leave much to be desired - which one fulfills with "Distant Star." It is also different because, while famous for his first person narration, "Ramirez Hoffman" is the only instance that Bolano appears in this novel, so take what one can from it.

If you love this, don't worry - New Directions has many more novels coming. This will surely tide fans down until FSG releases Bolano's 1,200+ page masterpiece "2666" sometime, hopefully, next year. Enjoy.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Almost As Strange A The Truth, May 9, 2008

By	Philip T. Racicot (Killeen, TX USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

When I approach a satirical work I follow a simple rubric: does it make me laugh. The honest belly laugh is, for me, the "scathe" in scathing satire. There is not a single chapter in Roberto Bolano's "Nazi Literature in America" that failed to elicit howls of laughter sometimes accompanied by tears. Bolano presents the reader with a compendium of fictional biographies of non-existent writers. With each entry one gets the impression that he has taken Hannah Arendt's "the banality of evil" seriously. Each author is presented in an uncritical and dead-pan manner which forces the reader to ferret out the "evil" in the context of his/her "banal" biographical narrative. Not a single "author" in "Nazi Literature" approaches anything like genius. Even those who live rather colorful lives write in rather turgid prose and aimless fiction that produces a sort of stupor in their readership. This, I think is the key to understanding what Bolano is really up to. He may have had Goya's famous etching in mind:"El sueno de la razon produce monstruos" (the sleep of reason brings forth monsters).

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting and Enjoyable, March 15, 2008

By	R. Albin (Ann Arbor, Michigan United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

An unusual and enjoyable book apparently inspired by some of the work of Borges. Nazi... is a pseudohistory of fictitious literary figures of the Western Hemisphere, mainly from Latin America, who fall under the general umbrella of Fascism or far right views. Something of a parody of scholarly work, the book is a series of sketches of each fictitious figure of varying length, often overlapping with some of the other fictitious figures. The book concludes with a fake bibliography and listing of more minor figures. Bolano's creativity is impressive. Wildly romantic upper class Argentinean female poets, lower class Argentine soccer hooligans, Chilean military officers, American white supremacist criminals, and bizarre loners of all nationalities are depicted. I suspect this book has a number of references apparent only to people with a good knowledge of Latin American literature.

This is more than a clever work of imagination. Nor is it merely a pastiche-imitation of Borges. Bolano's apparent themes of frustrated passion, and the diversion of passion into brutal violence are his own. While this is hardly a major work of literature, I'm impressed with Bolano's clear, mordant, and sometimes surprising prose.