Paris, 1938. The Peruvian poet Cesar Vallejo lies in hospital, hiccupping himself to death.
When the doctors struggle to offer a diagnosis, his wife calls on an acquaintance of her friend Madame Reynaud, the mesmerist and reclusive bachelor Pierre Pain. Pain, in love and eager to impress, agrees to help. But on a night that 'smells of something strange', things soon go awry...
A wonderfully oneiric novella that blends the finest of Edgar Allan Poe with Jorge Luis Borges and Bolano's truly astonishing alchemical gifts, Monsieur Pain is a gripping noir conspiracy as rich as it is strange.
TRANSLATED BY CHRIS ANDREWS
‘A surrealist nightmare, with overtones of Edgar Allan Poe and Raymond Chandler’ The Times
This marvellous little yarn is dark, mysterious and rich in surprises... If you have yet to enter the daringly kaleidoscopic labyrinth that is Roberto Bolano's imagination, this is a lively place to begin what will be quite an experience’ Irish Times
This marvellous little yarn is dark, mysterious and rich in surprises . . . If you have yet to enter the daringly kaleidoscopic labyrinth that is Roberto Bolano's imagination, this is a lively place to begin what will be quite an experience. ― Irish Times
[Monsieur Pain is] a taste of what made him such a formidable talent. ― Metro
Monsieur Pain is a mystery in which the mystery remains unsolved. The novel strikes a compelling balance of lucidity and strangeness. ― Times Literary Supplement
Bolaño creates the atmosphere of a surrealist nightmare, with overtones of Edgar Allan Poe and Raymond Chandler. ― The Times
Whodunnit with no who or it and precious little dunn, but plenty to offer the lover of literary intrigue. ― Word
About the Author
Roberto Bolaño was born in Santiago, Chile in 1953 and died in Catalonia in 2003. He was widely regarded as the essential Latin American writer of our age. He was best known for his novels (including The Savage Detectives, which won a number of prestigious literary awards, Nocturno de Chile, translated as By Night in Chile, and 2666, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award) and his short stories, first published in English in Last Evenings on Earth.
