BookBrowse Reviews The Savage Detectives: A polymathic descendant of Borges and Pynchon, Roberto Bolaño traces the hidden connection between literature and violence

The Savage Detectives, written by Chilean-born novelist Bolaño (1953–2003) in 1998 but only now published in English, is the novel that made Bolaño famous amongst Spanish speakers and is considered his masterwork. Heavily autobiographical, it traces the actions of a small literary movement, the Visceral Realists, from 1975 to the mid-1990s. The action, as far as it goes, revolves around Ulises Lima and Arturo Belano (Bolaño's alter ego and a regular in his novels), founders of the Visceral Realist movement.

The book is top and tailed by entries from 17-year-old Juan Garcia Madero's diary, a new recruit to the movement, who records the events of 1975 and 1976 as the three men and a fugitive hooker search for a...