
Distant Star
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Narrated by:
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Walter Krochmal
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By:
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Roberto Bolano
About this listen
A chilling novel about the nightmare of a corrupt and brutal dictatorship.
The star of Roberto Bolano's hair-raising novel Distant Star is Alberto Ruiz-Tagle, an air force pilot who exploits the 1973 coup to launch his own version of the New Chilean Poetry, a multimedia enterprise involving sky-writing, poetry, torture, and photo exhibitions.
For our unnamed narrator, who first encounters this "star" in a college poetry workshop, Ruiz-Tagle becomes the silent hand behind every evil act in the darkness of Pinochet's regime. The narrator, unable to stop himself, tries to track Ruiz-Tagle down, and sees signs of his activity over and over again. A corrosive, mocking humor sparkles within Bolano's darkest visions of Chile under Pinochet. In Bolano's world there's a big graveyard and there's a big graveyard laugh. (He once described his novel By Night in Chile as "a tale of terror, a situation comedy, and a combination pastoral-gothic novel.")
Many Chilean authors have written about the "bloody events of the early Pinochet years, the abductions and murders," Richard Eder commented in The New York Times: "None has done it in so dark and glittering a fashion as Roberto Bolano."
©1996 Roberto Bolano and Editorial Anagrama, Translation copyright 2004 by Chris Andrews (P)2013 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Story
Alberto Ruiz-Tagle, fascinante y seductor poeta autodidacta habitual de los talleres literarios del Chile de Salvador Allende, y Carlos Wieder, piloto de las fuerzas aéreas chilenas que escribía versículos de la Biblia con el humo de una avioneta tras el golpe de estado de Pinochet: una y otra cara de la misma moneda, uno y el mismo oscuro personaje. Un individuo, encarnación pura del mal y la crueldad, que el narrador de esta historia, el alter ego de Bolaño y perenne detective salvaje Arturo Belano, se cuida de desmenuzar.
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Turn around
- By Cliente de Amazon on 02-21-20
By: Roberto Bolaño
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The Third Reich
- By: Roberto Bolano, Natasha Wimmer - translator
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 8 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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On vacation with his girlfriend, Ingeborg, the German war games champion Udo Berger returns to a small town on the Costa Brava where he spent the summers of his childhood. Soon they meet another vacationing German couple, Charly and Hanna, who introduce them to a band of locals—the Wolf, the Lamb, and El Quemado—and to the darker side of life in a resort town. Late one night, Charly disappears without a trace, and Udo's well-ordered life is thrown into upheaval; while Ingeborg and Hanna return to their lives in Germany, he refuses to leave the hotel.
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What just happened? :D
- By Amazon Customer on 08-17-16
By: Roberto Bolano, and others
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Woes of the True Policeman
- By: Roberto Bolaño
- Narrated by: Armando Durán
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Begun in the 1980s and worked on until the author's death, in 2003, Woes of the True Policeman is Roberto Bolaño's last, unfinished novel. The novel follows Oscar Amalfitano - an exiled Chilean university professor and widower - through the maze of his revolutionary past, his relationship with his teenage daughter, Rosa, his passion for a former student, and his retreat from scandal in Barcelona. Forced to leave Barcelona for Santa Teresa, a Mexican city close to the U.S. border where women are being killed in unprecedented numbers, Amalfitano soon begins an affair with Castillo, a young forger of Larry Rivers paintings.
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Outtakes maybe, but not very funny
- By Barbara on 02-01-13
By: Roberto Bolaño
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Cowboy Graves
- Three Novellas
- By: Roberto Bolaño, Natasha Wimmer - translator
- Narrated by: Anthony Rey Perez
- Length: 4 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Cowboy Graves is an unexpected treasure from the vault of a revolutionary talent. Roberto Bolaño's boundless imagination and seemingly inexhaustible gift for shaping the chaos of his reality into fiction is unmistakable in these three novellas. In Cowboy Graves, Arturo Belano - Bolaño's alter ego - returns to Chile after the coup to fight with his comrades for socialism.
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Bolano is awesome! Great work
- By Ben A Falk on 04-13-23
By: Roberto Bolaño, and others
What listeners say about Distant Star
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- benjamin
- 06-15-13
Probably better on paper.
Easy to miss important details if carrying out other tasks while listening. Otherwise the story is layered and well written.
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- Sierra
- 08-03-16
Omg
Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?
This book is a rough read, unless you're into poetry don't read it
What was one of the most memorable moments of Distant Star?
All the evil
What about Walter Krochmal’s performance did you like?
He got the voices correct and the translation was good, I preferred this to the Spanish version.
Could you see Distant Star being made into a movie or a TV series? Who should the stars be?
NO
Any additional comments?
Like poetry before you read this!! And know the poets of Russian history!! WW1!!
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3 people found this helpful
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- Tom
- 08-02-19
Very long account of a very short story.
This is the second book by Bolaño that I have read. I read By Night in Chile. Since that work was more a reflection or meditation than a novel, I read the Audible Plot Summary and thought this would be more of a thriller or murder mystery taking place in Post-Allende Chile. The setting was correct but the plot was too long and drawn out to thrill.
Bolaño writes for a Chilean audience and maybe only an audience of Chilean poets. In any case, his work is not aimed at me and that’s fine but Distant Star is my last Bolaño book. No mas!
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1 person found this helpful
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- Michael
- 03-30-24
Brilliantly dark and deeply funny
Many years ago I attempted to read Bolano’s well regarded 2666.
It was one of the few books I could not finish.
This caused me to avoid Bolano until I got a recent recommendation for Distant Star.
The publisher’s blurb starts “A chilling novel about the nightmare of a corrupt and brutal dictatorship.” Although this may be latterly true, this is ironic and darkly funny. There is a lot of humor based on the history of socialism and poetry (which is clearly not for everyone).
I found this uplifting and enjoyable.
I have added more Bolano to my reading list.
The narration was excellent matching the writing well.
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