Distant Star

1st paperback ed

Paperback (02 Jul 2009)

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Publisher's Synopsis

An unnamed narrator attempts to piece together the life and works of an enigmatic would-be poet turned military assassin during Pinochet's regime in Chile. In the early 1970s Alberto Ruiz-Tagle was a little-known poet living in southern Chile. After the military coup of 1973 that brought in the dictatorship of General Pinochet, he embarked upon a new career that involved him in committing murder and other brutalities, and subsequently led to his emergence as a lieutenant in the Chilean air force under his actual name, Carlos Wieder.

Some time later the narrator, now held in a prison camp, looks up and sees a World War II airplane writing the first words of the Book of Genesis in smoke in the sky. The aviator is none other Carlos Wieder, launching his own version of the New Chilean Poetry...

Roberto Bolano's novel is a chilling investigation of the fascist mentality and the limits of evil, as seen in its effects on a literary sensibility, as well as a gripping intellectual thriller.

About the Publisher

Vintage

Vintage

Vintage is a highly respected paperback publisher of contemporary fiction and non-fiction, publishing writers like Philip Roth, Martin Amis and Toni Morrison. There are many Booker and Nobel Prize-winning authors on the Vintage list such as Kingsley Amis, A S Byatt, J M Coetzee, Ismail Kadare, Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie, Anne Enright, Iris Murdoch, Roddy Doyle and Ben Okri, to name a few.

Book information

ISBN: 9780099461722
Publisher: Random House
Imprint: Vintage
Pub date:
Edition: 1st paperback ed
DEWEY: 863.64
DEWEY edition: 22
Language: English
Number of pages: 149
Weight: 120g
Height: 198mm
Width: 129mm
Spine width: 12mm