Amulet
Roberto Bolaño
Translated by Chris Andrews
192 pages
Synopsis
Auxilio Lacouture is trapped. For twelve days she hides alone in a lavatory on the fourth floor of the university. Staring at the floor, she begins a heartfelt and feverish tale: she is the Mother of Mexican poetry.
A highly charged first-person semi-hallucinatory novel, Amulet is a potent stream of consciousness through which the poets of Mexico rage and swirl. Filled with wild, dark literary prophecies, heroic poets, mad poets, artists ‘choked by the brilliance of youth’, Auxilio’s passionate narration – both heart-breaking and lyrical – is suffused with the essence of Roberto Bolaño’s art.
Roberto Bolaño redefined the form of the novel in his masterpiece 2666; with the hallucinatory narrative of Amulet, he reimagines what literature can become.New Statesman
A short, original, engaged and engaging novel; a good introduction to the longer works of this writer.Times Literary Supplement
Encapsulates the violence and tragedy of recent Latin American history . . . spare but beautifully compacted.The Times