Monsieur Pain by Roberto Bolaño
Paris, 1938. The Peruvian poet Cesar Vallejo lies dying in hospital. He's hiccupping himself to death. When the doctors struggle to offer a diagnosis his wife calls on an acquaintance of her friend Madame Reynaud, the mesmerist and reclusive bachelor Pierre Pain. Pain, in love with the widow Reynaud and eager to impress, agrees to help. But on a night that 'smells of something strange', things soon go awry...After the appearance of two mysterious Spaniards, Monsieur Pain finds his access to the hospital barred; Madame Reynaud leaves Paris and he is left alone. Ravaged by guilt and anxiety, he wanders the rainy, crepuscular streets. Then he encounters fellow mesmerist Plomeur-Boudou (who's working as a torturer for Franco, using his expertise to interrogate prisoners) and things become darker still. This brief, wonderfully oneiric novel blends the finest of Edgar Allan Poe with Jorge Luis Borges and, through Bolano's truly astonishing alchemical gift, produces a gripping noir conspiracy as rich as it is strange.
Roberto Bolaño was born in Santiago, Chile, in 1953. He grew up in Chile and Mexico City. His first full-length novel, The Savage Detectives, won the Herralde Prize and the Rómulo Gallegos Prize, and Natasha Wimmer’s translation of The Savage Detectives was chosen as one of the ten best books of 2007 by the Washington Post and the New York Times. Bolaño died in Blanes, Spain, at the age of fifty. Described by the New York Times as "the most significant Latin American literary voice of his generation", in 2008 he was posthumously awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction for his novel 2666. Chris Andrews was born in Newcastle, Australia, in 1962. He studied at the University of Melbourne and taught there, in the French program, from 1995 to 2008. He is now teaching at the University of Western Sydney, where he is a member of the Writing and Society Research Center. As well as translating books by Roberto Bolaño and César Aira for New Directions, he has published a critical study (Poetry and Cosmogony: Science in the Writing of Queneau and Ponge, Rodopi, 1999) and a collection of poems (Cut Lunch, Indigo, 2002).
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780330510561 |
| ISBN 10 | 0330510568 |
| Title | Monsieur Pain |
| Author | Roberto Bolaño |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Pan Macmillan |
| Year published | 2011-01-07 |
| Number of pages | 144 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |