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The Savage Detectives

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The Savage Detectives

By: Roberto Bolaño
Narrated by: Armando Duran, Eddie Lopez
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

New Year’s Eve, 1975. Two hunted men leave Mexico City in a borrowed white Impala.

Their quest: to track down the mythical, vanished poet Cesárea Tinajero. But, twenty years later, they are still on the run. The Savage Detectives is their remarkable journey through our darkening universe. Told, shared and mythologised by a generation of lovers, rebels and listeners, their testimonies are woven together into one of the most dazzling Latin American novels of all time.

TRANSLATED BY NATASHA WIMMER

‘Roberto Bolaño was a game changer: his field was politics, poetry and melancholia. He could be funny, he could be literate, he could be devastating. And his writing was always unparalleled’ Mariana Enríquez

‘Bolaño makes you feel changed for having read him; he adjusts your angle of view on the world’ Guardian

©1998 Roberto Bolaño (P)2024 Penguin Audio Action & Adventure Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Political World Literature Inspiring Latin American Mexico

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Critic reviews

'My favorite writer . . . The Savage Detectives is an ark bearing all the strange salvage of poetry and youth from catastrophes past and those yet to come.' (Nicole Krauss, author of The History of Love)
All stars
Most relevant
Couldn’t get past Part 2. So long. So repetitive. So much name-dropping of poets and writers that went completely over my head. Was just hoping for a cool, fun period story set in Mexico City. Hopes and dreams and energy shattered (being dramatic but not that dramatic). Normally I am a critical reader, but I am clearly way too dumb to understand the point of this novel. Would not recommend for normal people…

Didn’t ‘get’ it - long and un-interesting

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I liked it in the beginning, but after hours of listening without anything really happening, I gave up.

DNF

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Is this book long. Absolutely but it’s so well written, the characters are great and although I lost the plot this book becomes quite addictive that I didn’t really care. I preferred the Mexicans lost in Mexico and the sonora desert parts. Lastly the narrators kudos for you making a 27 hour book incredibly easy to listen to. Will be reading 2666 next.

Loved this

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