The Third Reich - by Roberto Bolaño (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice

On vacation with his girlfriend, Ingeborg, the German war-game champion Udo Berger returns to a small town on the Costa Brava where he spent his summers as a child. There, they meet another vacationing German couple, who introduce them to the darker side of the resort town's life. Soon Udo is enmeshed in a round of Third Reich, his favorite World War II strategy game, with a shadowy local called El Quemado. As the game draws to its conclusion, Udo discovers that the outcome may be all too real.

Written in 1989, The Third Reich is Roberto Bolaño's stunning exploration of memory and violence--and a rare glimpse at a world-class writer coming into his own.

Review Quotes

"A mesmerizing tale: sleek, linear, easily digested, beautifully translated . . . Classic Bolaño."
--The Washington Post

"A beguiling introduction to Bolaño . . . The Third Reich is giddily funny, but it is also prickly and bizarre enough to count among Bolaño's first-rate efforts."
--The Economist

"A perfect novel . . . Compassionate, disturbing, and deeply felt, it's as much of a gift as anything the late author has given us."
--NPR

"Think Kafka at a beach resort . . . For those who like their literature to make them look with fear and suspicion at even the most mundane events, The Third Reich is calling."
--The Cleveland Plain Dealer

"Bolaño is a master of atmosphere . . . in the tradition of Georges Simenon's gloomy romans durs . . . or the tightly controlled hallucinations of Alain Robbe-Grillet."
--The Wall Street Journal

"A brilliant first novel . . . all the more remarkable for its prescience."
--The New Republic

About the Author

Roberto Bolaño was born in Santiago, Chile, in 1953. He grew up in Chile and Mexico City, where he was a founder of the Infrarealist poetry movement. He is the author of The Savage Detectives, which received the Herralde Prize and the Rómulo Gallegos Prize, and 2666, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award. Bolaño died in Blanes, Spain, at the age of fifty.

Natasha Wimmer has translated many works of fiction and nonfiction by Spanish language authors, including Mario Vargas Llosa, Laura Restrepo, and Rodrigo Fresán, as well as Roberto Bolaño.