PW Review of Bolano

Galleys of Bolano’s Nazi Literature in the Americas have been circulating for a few months now, and everyone I’ve talked with absolutely loves the book. Publishers Weekly has the first actual review I’ve seen of this, and the reviewer tends to agree:

The title chosen by Bolaño (1953–2003) for this slim, fake encyclopedia is not wholly tongue-in-cheek: given the very real presence of former (and not-so-former) Nazis in Latin America following WWII, this book, despite being fiction, still had j’accuse-like power when first published in 1996. The poets described herein, though invented, seem—even at their most absurd—plausible, which is the secret to this sly book’s devastating effect. [. . .] The wild inventiveness of Bolaño’s evocations places them squarely in the realm of Borges—another writer who draws enormous power from the movement between the fictive and the real.