Last Evenings on Earth

Last Evenings on Earth is a collection of short stories, published in 2006, by the Chilean author Roberto Bolaño translated by Chris Andrews. The stories in this volume were selected from two Spanish language collections, Llamadas Telefonicas (1997), and Putas Asesinas (2001). The remaining stories in these two collections were later gathered in The Return.

Summary

Set amid the diaspora of Chilean exiles in Latin America and Europe, the fourteen stories in Last Evenings on Earth are peopled by Bolaño's beloved "failed generation" and demonstrate the complexities of and Latin American identity and history. The narrators are usually writers grappling with private (and often unlucky) quests, speaking in the first person as if giving a deposition—like witnesses to a crime. These protagonists tend to take detours and narrate unresolved efforts. They are characters living at the margins. Other stories find themselves narrated in the third person by the author "B.", which is one of many cases of Bolaño writing himself into his own fiction.

The volume can be interpreted as a politicized reconstitution of Julio Cortázar's short stories.

The Stories

• "Sensini"
• "Henri Simon Leprince"
• "Enrique Martin"
• "A Literary Adventure"
• "Phone Calls"
• "The Grub"
• "Anne Moore's Life"
• "Mauricio ("The Eye") Silva"
• "Gómez Palacio" - a writing teacher comes to the town of Gómez Palacio and goes on a strange car-ride with the director of the writing program.
• "Last Evenings On Earth" - a Chilean father and his son vacation in Acapulco and visit a whorehouse bar, where they get into a fight.
• "Days of 1978"
• "Vagabond in France and Belgium"
• "Dentist"
• "Dance Card"

External links

• "The Folklore of Exile" by Francine Prose, The New York Times, 9 July 2006
• "Book Review: Last Evenings on Earth" by Richard Marcus, Blogcritics Magazine, 24 May 2008
• "Book Review: Last Evenings on Earth" by Christopher P. Winner, The American
• "Last Evenings on Earth by Roberto Bolaño" by Alex Wegner, Words Without Borders
• "Gómez Palacio" - a story from the collection, published in The New Yorker, August 8, 2005.