Amulet

By Roberto Bolaño

Book Overview

Amulet is a monologue, like Bola o's acclaimed debut in English, By Night in Chile. The speaker is Auxilio Lacouture, a Uruguayan woman who moved to Mexico in the 1960s, becoming the "Mother of Mexican Poetry," hanging out with the young poets in the caf s and bars of the University. She's tall, thin, and blonde, and her favorite young poet in the 1970s is none other than Arturo Belano (Bola o's fictional stand-in throughout his books).

As well as her young poets, Auxilio recalls three remarkable women: the melancholic young philosopher Elena, the exiled Catalan painter Remedios Varo, and Lilian Serpas, a poet who once slept with Che Guevara. And in the course of her imaginary visit to the house of Remedios Varo, Auxilio sees an uncanny landscape, a kind of chasm. This chasm reappears in a vision at the end of the book: an army of children is marching toward it, singing as they go. The children are the idealistic young Latin Americans who came to maturity in the '70s, and the last words of the novel are: "And that song is our amulet."

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0811216640
• ISBN13: 9780811216647
• Release Date: January 2007
• Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.6" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Incredible first person novella!

This has become one of my favorite works by Bolaño or any other writer for that matter— and perhaps my favorite heroine. The narrative is a kaleidoscopic first person interiority of mirrors and a ‘polymorphic’ account of history and trauma. I mention trauma, but not a grim, bloody sort of trauma, if this makes sense. More of a vision of the past, present, and future.