“Full of moral and political urgency . . . Excellent.” —Ursula K. Le Guin, The Guardian
In 1938 Paris, Pierre Pain, a lonely bachelor and a beleaguered mesmerist, receives a telegram from his friend Madame Reynaud. An acquaintance of hers lies in a hospital bed beset with a mysterious—and apparently terminal—case of the hiccups, and she entreats Pain to cure him. Quietly in love with Reynaud, and buoyed by her faith in him, he agrees to see the patient, the exiled Peruvian poet César Vallejo. So sets off a nightmarish and labyrinthine chain of events that sees Pain racing, breathless, through the umbrous streets of Paris: He finds himself barred from approaching Vallejo’s bedside. He is trailed by a ghostly pair of Spaniards who emerge from the shadows only to bribe him not to treat the poet. He encounters a former peer, now working across the Spanish border, whose career has taken a shockingly sinister turn. A hypnotic and surreal noir, Roberto Bolaño's Monsieur Pain takes us on a vertiginous journey through conspiracy, occultism, and the unspeakable evil looming in our midst.
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Monsieur Pain
“Full of moral and political urgency . . . Excellent.” —Ursula K. Le Guin, The Guardian
In 1938 Paris, Pierre Pain, a lonely bachelor and a beleaguered mesmerist, receives a telegram from his friend Madame Reynaud. An acquaintance of hers lies in a hospital bed beset with a mysterious—and apparently terminal—case of the hiccups, and she entreats Pain to cure him. Quietly in love with Reynaud, and buoyed by her faith in him, he agrees to see the patient, the exiled Peruvian poet César Vallejo. So sets off a nightmarish and labyrinthine chain of events that sees Pain racing, breathless, through the umbrous streets of Paris: He finds himself barred from approaching Vallejo’s bedside. He is trailed by a ghostly pair of Spaniards who emerge from the shadows only to bribe him not to treat the poet. He encounters a former peer, now working across the Spanish border, whose career has taken a shockingly sinister turn. A hypnotic and surreal noir, Roberto Bolaño's Monsieur Pain takes us on a vertiginous journey through conspiracy, occultism, and the unspeakable evil looming in our midst.
“Full of moral and political urgency . . . Excellent.” —Ursula K. Le Guin, The Guardian
In 1938 Paris, Pierre Pain, a lonely bachelor and a beleaguered mesmerist, receives a telegram from his friend Madame Reynaud. An acquaintance of hers lies in a hospital bed beset with a mysterious—and apparently terminal—case of the hiccups, and she entreats Pain to cure him. Quietly in love with Reynaud, and buoyed by her faith in him, he agrees to see the patient, the exiled Peruvian poet César Vallejo. So sets off a nightmarish and labyrinthine chain of events that sees Pain racing, breathless, through the umbrous streets of Paris: He finds himself barred from approaching Vallejo’s bedside. He is trailed by a ghostly pair of Spaniards who emerge from the shadows only to bribe him not to treat the poet. He encounters a former peer, now working across the Spanish border, whose career has taken a shockingly sinister turn. A hypnotic and surreal noir, Roberto Bolaño's Monsieur Pain takes us on a vertiginous journey through conspiracy, occultism, and the unspeakable evil looming in our midst.
Roberto Bolaño (1953–2003) was the author of The Savage Detectives and 2666, among many other notable works. Born in Santiago, Chile, he later lived in Mexico City, Paris, and Barcelona. His accolades include the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Premio Rómulo Gallegos. He died at the age of fifty and is widely considered to be the greatest Latin American writer of his generation.
Chris Andrews has translated books of prose fiction by César Aira, Roberto Bolaño, Liliana Colanzi, and Ágota Kristóf, among others. He is also the author of How to Do Things with Forms and The Oblong Plot.
Roberto Bolaño was born in Santiago, Chile, in 1953. He grew up in Chile and Mexico City, where he was a founder of the Infrarealist poetry movement. His first full-length novel, The Savage Detectives, received the Herralde Prize and the Rómulo Gallegos Prize when it appeared in 1998. Roberto Bolaño died in Blanes, Spain, at the age of fifty.
