Amulet

Auxilio Lacouture is trapped.

For twelve days she hides alone in a lavatory on the fourth floor of her university. Staring at the floor, she begins a heartfelt and feverish tale: she is the Mother of Mexican poetry.

A highly charged first-person semi-hallucinatory novella, Amulet is a potent stream of consciousness through which the poets of Mexico rage and swirl. Filled with wild, dark literary prophecies, heroic poets, mad poets, artists ‘choked by the brilliance of youth’, Auxilio’s passionate narration – both heartbreaking and lyrical – is suffused with the essence of Roberto Bolano’s art.

TRANSLATED BY CHRIS ANDREWS

'Encapsulates the violence and tragedy of recent Latin American history' The Times

‘Roberto Bolano redefined the form of the novel in his masterpiece 2666; with the hallucinatory narrative of Amulet, he reimagines what literature can become’ New Statesman