Roberto Bolaño up for posthumous honor

Chilean author Roberto Bolaño died in 2003 yet his critical reputation among literacy circles continues to grow.

The late author’s book “2666” was named as one of the National Book Critics Circle Award finalists for fiction. Bolaño was posthumously acknowledged by the National Book Critics Circle though he faces stiff competition from other finalists including first-time author M. Glenn Taylor.

“2666” was first published in Spanish in 2004 and reviewers have called it a “disturbingly original...work of art” and an “awe-inspiring three-ring extravaganza of a novel.”

Bolaño passed away too soon at the age of fifty; as he said in his acceptance speech of the 1999 Rómulo Gallegos prize:

What's true is that I am Chilean, and I am also a lot of other things. And having arrived at this point, I must abandon Jarry and Bolivar and try to remember the writer who said that the homeland of a writer is his tongue…It sounds a little demagogic, but I agree with him completely, and I know that sometimes there is no recourse left us but to get a little demagogic, just like sometimes there is no recourse left us but to dance a bolero under the light of streetlamps or a red moon.

Also named by National Book Critics Circle was Chicano poet Juan Felipe Herrera for “Half of the World in Light”.

Image- New York Times
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