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Amulet (novel)
Encyclopedia
Amulet is a novel by the Chilean author Roberto Bolaño
. It was published in 1999. An English translation, by Chris Andrews, was published by New Directions in 2006.
It begins: “This is going to be a horror story.” The speaker is Auxilio Lacouture, known as the “Mother of Mexican Poetry”. Tall, thin, and blonde, she becomes famous as the sole person who resists the army’s 1968 invasion of the university during the now infamous Tlatelolco massacre
—she hides in a women's toilet for twelve days. As she tries to outlast the occupiers and grows ever hungrier, Auxilio recalls her life, her lost teeth, her beloved friends and poets, and she soon moves on to strange landscapes: ice-bound mountains, seedy bars in “the dark night of the soul of Mexico City,” a terrifying chasm, and a bathroom where moonlight shines, moving slowly from tile to tile.
Auxilio is also featured in The Savage Detectives
, where she narrates her stay in the restroom of the besieged university. However, as Francisco Goldman has noted, Amulet "sings an enthralling and haunting ode to youth, life on the margins, poetry and poets, and Mexico City. Much more than a companion piece to The Savage Detectives - it shares some of the same characters - Amulet may be Bolaño's most autobiographical book. Formally and verbally, it also represents some of his most innovative and thrilling writing."
Roberto Bolaño
Roberto Bolaño Ávalos was a Chilean novelist and poet. In 1999 he won the Rómulo Gallegos Prize for his novel Los detectives salvajes , and in 2008 he was posthumously awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction for his novel 2666, which was described by board member Marcela Valdes...
. It was published in 1999. An English translation, by Chris Andrews, was published by New Directions in 2006.
Plot summary
Amulet embodies in one woman’s voice the melancholy and violent history of Latin America.It begins: “This is going to be a horror story.” The speaker is Auxilio Lacouture, known as the “Mother of Mexican Poetry”. Tall, thin, and blonde, she becomes famous as the sole person who resists the army’s 1968 invasion of the university during the now infamous Tlatelolco massacre
Tlatelolco massacre
The Tlatelolco massacre, also known as The Night of Tlatelolco , was a government massacre of student and civilian protesters and bystanders that took place during the afternoon and night of October 2, 1968, in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas in the Tlatelolco section of Mexico City...
—she hides in a women's toilet for twelve days. As she tries to outlast the occupiers and grows ever hungrier, Auxilio recalls her life, her lost teeth, her beloved friends and poets, and she soon moves on to strange landscapes: ice-bound mountains, seedy bars in “the dark night of the soul of Mexico City,” a terrifying chasm, and a bathroom where moonlight shines, moving slowly from tile to tile.
Auxilio is also featured in The Savage Detectives
The Savage Detectives
The Savage Detectives is an award-winning novel published by the Chilean author Roberto Bolaño in 1998. Natasha Wimmer's English translation was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2007...
, where she narrates her stay in the restroom of the besieged university. However, as Francisco Goldman has noted, Amulet "sings an enthralling and haunting ode to youth, life on the margins, poetry and poets, and Mexico City. Much more than a companion piece to The Savage Detectives - it shares some of the same characters - Amulet may be Bolaño's most autobiographical book. Formally and verbally, it also represents some of his most innovative and thrilling writing."
External links
- "Found in Translation" by Aura Estada, Boston ReviewBoston ReviewBoston Review is a bimonthly American political and literary magazine. The magazine covers, specifically, political debates, literature, and poetry...
, July, 2007 - "Amulet by Robeto Bolaño" Bookslut, March, 2007
- "Robeto Bolaño's Lost Boys" by Benjanin Lytal, New York SunNew York SunThe New York Sun was a weekday daily newspaper published in New York City from 2002 to 2008. When it debuted on April 16, 2002, adopting the name, motto, and masthead of an otherwise unrelated earlier New York paper, The Sun , it became the first general-interest broadsheet newspaper to be started...
, January 17, 2007 - "Amulet by Roberto Bolaño" by Scott Bryan Wilson, The Quarterly Conversation, Spring, 2007