The New York Times includes Bolaño in the top 10 of the 100 best books of the 21st century – 2024-07-17 13:17:08 – 2024-07-17 13:20:03 – 2024-07-17 13:21:15 – 2024-07-17 13:23:51 – 2024-07-17 13:24:56 – 2024-07-17 13:25:08 – 2024-07-17 13:26:06

The American media outlet The New York Times included Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) in the top 10 of the 100 best books of the 21st century, reported the Universidad de Chile newspaper.

The NYT spoke to a total of 503 novelists, nonfiction writers, poets, critics and literature lovers to define the 100 best books of our time, where Chilean literature was highly valued, even making it into the top 10.

The prestigious English-speaking newspaper placed three national titles in the list: “2666” and “The Savage Detectives” by Roberto Bolaño, and “A Terrible Greenness,” translated into English with the title “When we cease to understand the world,” by Benjamín Labatut. These were ranked at number 6, 38 and 83, respectively.

“2666,” Bolaño’s robust posthumous fiction, was described by the NYT as a “feverish, dizzying novel” that creates “an entire world ruled in equal parts by boredom and the deepest horror.” “In Natasha Wimmer’s impeccable translation, Bolaño’s novel is deep, mysterious, effervescent, and dizzying: reading it, you go from feeling like a tornado spotter to feeling swept up in the vortex, and finally suspecting that you yourself are one,” the ranking reads.

Regarding “The Savage Detectives,” perhaps the Chilean’s undisputed classic, the newspaper quoted Peruvian writer Daniel Alarcón, who said that it is a “daring, hilarious, beautiful and moving story. It is also more than 600 pages long, so I know that my memory of having read it in one sitting is definitely not true. Still, the fact that it feels that way is revealing. I was not the same writer I had been before I read it, nor the same person. Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima became personal heroes, and everything I have written since has been shaped by Bolaño’s masterpiece.”

The inclusion of “Un verdor terrible” is also more than coherent. After its publication in 2020, Labatut’s science fiction became a publishing phenomenon, winning rave reviews from the specialized press, making it onto the shortlist for the International Booker Prize and selling out editions in several bookstores in the country.

“You don’t need to know anything about quantum theory to start reading this book, a deeply researched and exquisitely imagined group portrait of tormented geniuses,” said American critic AO Scott to the NYT. “By the end, you’ll know enough to be terrified. Labatut is interested in how the search for scientific certainty can lead to, or emerge from, states of extreme psychological and spiritual turmoil. His characters (Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, and Erwin Schrödinger, among others) discover a universe that defies rational understanding. After them, “the scientific method and its object could no longer be separated.” It may seem abstract, but in Labatut’s hands the story of quantum physics is violent, suspenseful, and ultimately heartbreaking.”

NYT Top 10 Best Books of the 21st Century:

“My Brilliant Friend,” Elena Ferrante.
“The Warmth of Other Suns,” Isabel Wilkerson.
“In the Wolf’s Court”, Hilary Mantel.
“The Known World,” Edward P. Jones.
“The Corrections,” Jonathan Franzen.
“2666”, Roberto Bolaño.
“The Underground Railroad,” Colson Whitehead.
“Austerlitz”, W. G. Sebald.
“Never let me go”, Kazuo Ishiguro.
“Gilead”, Marilynne Robinson.