John Coltrane jamming with the Sex Pistols.--John M. Richardson "Esquire"

Roberto Bolaño was an examplary literary rebel. To drag fiction toward the unknown, he had to go there himself, and there invent a method with which to represent it. Since the unknown place was reality, the results are multi-dimensional.--Sarah Kerr "The New York Review of Books"

Bolaño wrote with the high-voltage first-person braininess of a Saul Bellow and an extreme subversive vision of his own.--Francisco Goldman "The New York Times Magazine"

Delightfully noirish.--Brad Hooper "Booklist"

Monsieur Pain, an early novella, beautifully translated by Chris Andrews, joins his other works in all their aching splendour.--Carolina de Robertis "National Post"

A heightened sense of analogy aligns careless deserters, serious moviegoers and sold-out psychics to a world of labyrinthine visions....--Roberto Ontiveros "The Dallas Morning News"

A real discovery and a substantial addition to the growing Bolaño library in English.--Stephen Henighan "The Quarterly Conversation"