The Unknown University

'Bolaño writes with such elegance, verve and style and is so immensely readable' GuardianRoberto Bolaño confirmed his place as a giant of Latin American literature with his novels The Savage Detectives and 2666. Perhaps surprisingly to some of his fiction fans, Bolaño touted poetry as the superior art form. When asked, 'What makes you believe you're a better poet than a novelist?' Bolaño replied, 'The poetry makes me blush less'. In 1993, fearing for his health, Bolaño began collecting the poetry he had written since his arrival in Spain in 1977. With poems written in prose, stories in verse and flashes of writing that can hardly be categorized, this bilingual edition of The Unknown University represents the author's definitive work in his preferred medium.'A book filled with sorrows and joys and discoveries as Bolaño the poet takes up themes that are repeated often in his novels. For him, writers are men and women engaged in a sacred search, with poets the purest seekers of all. It's a pursuit that's all the more noble, given that Bolaño knows that the immortality writers seek is unattainable' Los Angeles Times'We savour all he has written as every offering is a portal into the elaborate terrain of his genius' Patti Smith