Roberto Bolaño Ávalos (Spanish pronunciation: [roˈβerto βoˈlaɲo ˈaβalos]) (April 28, 1953 – July 15, 2003) was a Chilean novelist and poet. In 1999 he won the Rómulo Gallegos Prize for his novel Los detectives salvajes (The Savage Detectives), and in 2008 he was posthumously awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction for his novel 2666.
Bolaño was born in Santiago, the son of a truck driver (who was also a boxer) and a teacher. He...
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Roberto Bolaño Ávalos (Spanish pronunciation: [roˈβerto βoˈlaɲo ˈaβalos]) (April 28, 1953 – July 15, 2003) was a Chilean novelist and poet. In 1999 he won the Rómulo Gallegos Prize for his novel Los detectives salvajes (The Savage Detectives), and in 2008 he was posthumously awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction for his novel 2666.
Bolaño was born in Santiago, the son of a truck driver (who was also a boxer) and a teacher. He and his sister spent their early years in southern and coastal Chile. By his own account he was a skinny, nearsighted and bookish but unpromising child. He was dyslexic, and was often bullied at school, where he felt an outsider.
In 1968 he moved with his family to Mexico City, dropped out of school, worked as a journalist and became active in left-wing political causes.
A key episode in Bolaño's life, mentioned in different forms in several of his works, occurred in 1973, when he left Mexico for Chile to "help build the revolution" by...
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