The Savage Detectives
Roberto Bolaño's novel begins in 1970s Mexico City, where young poets Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima lead a fringe avant-garde movement they call the visceral realists. The book opens through the diary of a teenage follower, then expands into a vast collection of testimonies from dozens of narrators across many countries and years, all circling the two poets and their search for an obscure, long-lost writer. The result is a roving portrait of friendship, exile, ambition, and the disappointments of a literary life. Widely regarded as one of the most important Latin American novels of recent decades, it won the Herralde Prize and the Romulo Gallegos Prize and made Bolaño's international reputation.
Also by Roberto Bolaño
What you might want to know about The Savage Detectives
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Two young poets search for a vanished writer across decades and continents in Roberto Bolaño's sprawling novel of literary obsession.
It uses a fragmented structure with dozens of narrators, but the central thread follows two poets and their search for a lost writer.
Yes. It won the Herralde Prize and the Romulo Gallegos Prize and helped build Bolaño's international reputation.
The Savage Detectives was written by Roberto Bolaño, published in 1998 by Penguin Random House.
The Savage Detectives is 648 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Savage Detectives takes most readers 10 to 14 hours to finish.
The Savage Detectives is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
