num_pages: 150
description: The star of Roberto Bolaño'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 Bolaño's darkest visions of Chile under Pinochet. In Bolaño'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 The New York Times: "None has done it in such a dark and glittering fashion as Roberto Bolaño."
language: English
title: Distant Star
titlecomplete: Distant Star
characters: Juan Stein, Bibiano O'Ryan, Veronica Garmendia, Diego Soto, Carlos Wieder (Alberto Ruiz-Tagle), Arturo Belano, Angelica Garmendia
genres: Spanish Literature, 20th Century, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Novels, Literature, Latin American, Fiction, Latin American Literature, Contemporary
ratings_count: 11017
places: Spain, Concepcion
awards: awardedAt: 1104566400000
name: Premio Valle-Inclán
category: Chris Andrews
publisher: New Directions