Roberto Bolaño In Context: (Literature in Context)

From his first fifteen years in Chile, to his nine years in Mexico City from 1968 to 1977, to the quarter of a century he lived and worked in the Blanes-Barcelona area on the Costa Brava in Spain through his death in 2003, Roberto Bolaño developed into an astonishingly diverse, prolific writer. He is one of the most consequential and widely read of his generation in any language. Increasingly recognized not only in Latin America, but as a major figure in World Literature, Bolaño is an essential writer for the 21st century world. This volume provides a comprehensive mapping of the pivotal contexts, events, stages, and influences shaping Bolaño's writing. As the wide-ranging investigations of this volume's 30 distinguished scholars show, Bolaño's influence and impact will shape literary cultures worldwide for years to come.

Table of Contents:
Part I. Geographical, Social and Historical Contexts: 1. Mapping Bolaño's worlds Jonathan B. Monroe; 2. Chile, 1953–1973 María Inés Lagos; 3. The Pinochet era, 1973–1990 Michael J. Lazarra; 4. Dictatorships in the Southern Cone Ksenija Bilbija; 5. Mexico City, 1968 Viviane Mahieux; 6. Mexico City, Paris, and life versus art Rubén Gallo; 7. Spain, Europe, 1977–2003 Ana Fernández-Cebrían; 8. Transatlantic currents: Europe and the Americas Rory O'Bryen; Part II. Shaping Events and Literary History: 9. France, Spain, 1938 Juli Highfill; 10. The Cold War Patrick Iber; 11. After the fall of the wall: 1989–2001 Edmundo Paz Soldán; 12. Latin American literature Ilan Stavans; 13. French connections Dominique Jullien; 14. German and Russian precursors Thomas O. Beebee; 15. After the two 9/11s: Santiago de Chile, 1973, New York, 2001 Nicholas Birns; Part III: Genres, Discourses, Media: 16. Essays and short stories José Luis Venegas; 17. Poetry I: the ghost that runs through the writing Rubén Medina; 18. Poetry II: parody and the question of history Sergio Villalobos-Ruminott; 19. The novel and the canon Roberto González Echevarría; 20. Detective fiction Pablo Piccato; 21. Journalism, media, mass culture Tania Gentic; 22. Literary criticism and literary history Ana Del Sarto; Part IV. Aesthetics, Culture, and Politics: 23. The abomination of literature Brett Levinson; 24. Religion and politics Aníbal González; 25. Gender and sexuality Ana Forcinito; 26. Race and ethnicity Juan Decastro; 27. Trauma and collective memory Ryan F. Long; 28. Fictions of the avant-gardes Michelle Clayton; 29. Love and friendship Ignacio López-Calvo; 30. World literature: twenty-first-century legacies Héctor Hoyos.

About the Author :
Jonathan B. Monroe is Professor of Comparative Literature, and a member of the Graduate Fields of Comparative Literature, English, and Romance Studies, at Cornell University. He is the author of Framing Roberto Bolaño: Poetry, Fiction, Literary History, Politics, also with Cambridge University Press (2019); A Poverty of Objects: The Prose Poem and the Politics of Genre; and Demosthenes' Legacy, a book of prose poems and short fiction. Co-author and editor of Writing and Revising the Disciplines; Local Knowledges, Local Practices: Writing in the Disciplines at Cornell; Poetry Community, Movement (Diacritics), and Poetics of Avant-Garde Poetries (Poetics Today), he has published widely on questions of genre, writing and disciplinary practices, innovative poetries of the past two centuries, and avant-garde movements and their contemporary legacies.

Review :
'[An] indispensable volume that situates Bolaño in his historical, cultural and literary context, providing the necessary background to make sense of his life, work and legacy.' Claudio Palomares-Salas, Bulletin of Spanish Studies