Dropped from the Olympic figure skating team, Nuria Martí’s fate pivots her into a world of corruption, jealousy – and revenge.
Cushioning her fall from grace, a besotted admirer builds a secret ice rink for her in the ruins of an old masion on the outskirts of their seaside town. What he doesn’t tell her is he paid for it using public funds. Such deceit is not without repercussions, and the skating rink soon becomes a crime scene.
Narrated by a corrupt and pompous civil servant, a beleaguered romantic poet, and a duplicitous civil servant, The Skating Rink is a darkly atmospheric tale of murder and its motives.
TRANSLATED BY CHRIS ANDREWS
'A work of intense and unrealized longing' The New York Times
‘Bolaño makes you feel changed for having read him; he adjusts your angle of view on the world’ Guardian
The Skating Rink…like much of what [Bolano] wrote, leaves many new novels looking pretty bland. ― The Observer
This Catalan drama sizzles with unrequited love and murderous ambition. ― The Independent
[A] short, exquisite novel ― The New York Times Book Review
A sizzling cocktail of sex, death and obsession set on the Costa Brava. ― The Times
Elegant, elusive and amusing ― Daily Telegraph
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.
