Amulet - Tapa blanda

A curtain-raising taster to the epic of his landmark works. -- Boyd Tonkin * Independent * His work is the crossroads where Marquez meets Burroughs and Borges meets Mailer, resulting in a riotous dust-up. -- John Banville * Guardia * Encapsulates the violence and tragedy of recent Latin American history . . . spare but beautifully compacted. * The Times * A short, original, engaged and engaging novel; a good introduction to the longer works of this writer. * Times Literary Supplement * Roberto Bolano redefined the form of the novel in his masterpiece 2666; with the hallucinatory narrative of Amulet, he reimagines what literature can become. * New Statesman *

Auxilio Lacouture is trapped. For twelve days she hides alone in a lavatory on the fourth floor of the university. Staring at the floor, she begins a heartfelt and feverish tale: she is the Mother of Mexican poetry. A highly charged first-person semi-hallucinatory novel, Amulet is a potent stream of consciousness through which the poets of Mexico rage and swirl. Filled with wild, dark literary prophecies, heroic poets, mad poets, artists `choked by the brilliance of youth', Auxilio's passionate narration - both heart-breaking and lyrical - is suffused with the essence of Roberto Bolano's art.