A Writer Crosses Over

It did.

By the early 1990s he was supporting his family by writing stories and novellas. By the end of the decade, "The Savage Detectives" had won the Rómulo Gallegos prize, the Spanish-speaking world's most significant literary award.

But there was more driving Bolaño than money. "In 1992," Wimmer writes, "he had been diagnosed with a fatal liver disease, which meant that nearly all his fiction was written under the threat of death."

Despite his growing reputation in continental Europe and Latin America, the English-speaking world was slow to take notice.

The Brits got there first. In 2003, Harvill Press published a translation of Bolaño's novella "By Night in Chile," which takes the form of a deathbed confession by a priest and literary critic involved with the Pinochet regime. Meanwhile, in New York, Barbara Epler -- editor in chief of New Directions, a widely respected small press with a long history of publishing literature in translation -- had been lobbied by Bolaño admirers such as Guatemalan American novelist Francisco Goldman.

"You've got to look at Bolaño!" Epler remembers Goldman urging. When Epler heard the Harvill translation was in the works, she called and asked to see the galleys.

"I had never read a book like 'By Night in Chile,' " Epler says. "I was beside myself."

New Directions published the book in December 2003. It sold a modest 6,000 copies or so -- "that's good for us," Epler says -- and she followed up with two more Bolaño novellas ("Distant Star" and "Amulet") and a story collection ("Last Evenings on Earth"). She figured New Directions would do his longer fiction as well.

No such luck.

Bolaño's estate decided it wanted a bigger publisher for "The Savage Detectives" and the even more massive novel, "2666," that Bolaño completed shortly before his death. Enter Farrar, Straus and Giroux, which bought world English rights to both books (for a sum most likely in the very low six figures) then spun off United Kingdom rights to Picador. Farrar, Straus will publish "2666" next year.

Epler was disappointed but not bitter.

"What can we say? It's like -- rats!" she says. But Farrar, Straus "is a good publisher" whose size and corporate ownership give it "more muscle and marketing power." Besides, any marketing muscle applied to "The Savage Detectives" will surely boost interest in Bolaño's other work.