Distant Star

A chilling novel about the nightmare of a corrupt and brutal dictatorship. The star of Roberto Bolaos hair-raising novel Distant Star is Alberto Ruiz-Tagle an air force pilot who exploits the 1973 coup to launch his own version of the New Chilean Poetry a multimedia enterprise involving sky-writing poetry torture and photo exhibitions. For our unnamed narrator who first encounters this "star" in a college poetry workshop Ruiz-Tagle becomes the silent hand behind every evil act in the darkness of Pinochets regime. The narrator unable to stop himself tries to track Ruiz-Tagle down and sees signs of his activity over and over again. A corrosive mocking humor sparkles within Bolaos darkest visions of Chile under Pinochet. In Bolaos world theres a big graveyard and theres a big graveyard laugh. (He once described his novel By Night in Chile as "a tale of terror a situation comedy and a combination pastoral-gothic novel.") Many Chilean authors have written about the "bloody events of the early Pinochet years the abductions and murders " Richard Eder commented in the The New York Times: "None has done it in so dark and glittering a fashion as Roberto Bolao."