Chris Andrews

A dazzling, daring tale of poets at the end of the world, Distant Star is Roberto Bolano's miniature dystopian masterpiece Alberto Ruiz-Tagle was once the quiet, unpromising member of Chile's young poetry scene. But the military coup of 1973 sees Alberto reborn as Chile's leading celebrity poet, Carlos Wieder, known for his daring sky poems, penned in smoke high above the cities. Where did this talent suddenly spring from? And, how is it connected to the disappearance of the beautiful Garmendia twins? Told from across the years in exile in Europe, the narrator's attempts to trace the fate of his old circle will lead him to one last confrontation with the brutality of their generation. BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days

Never before translated short stories by the legendary Ágota Kristóf 'One of the 20th century's greatest writers' Camilla Grudova 'Pure genius' Max Porter I don't care: it's not even pretty. The song is sad, and old, so old. I Don't Care presents the best short fiction by the Hungarian master Ágota Kristóf, selected by the author herself and available in English for the first time. Written immediately before her acclaimed Notebook trilogy, the works here oscillate between parables, surrealist anecdotes, and stories animated by a realism stripped to the bone. By turns harrowing and whimsical, cruel and sharply funny, Kristóf's world shifts our gaze to a shared reality, past and present. Here exile and existential alienation are undeniable - as is the force of every sentence, making for extraordinary and essential reading. Translated from French by Chris Andrews

Father Sebastian Urrutia Lacroix is dying. A priest, a member of Opus Dei, a literary critic and a poet, in his feverish delirium the crucial events of his past swell around him. From glimpses of the great poet Pablo Neruda, the German writer Ernst Junger and his one-time student, General Pinochet, to nightmarish flashes of falcons and falconers, the Chilean landscape and faces of those now dead, reality and imagination crowd and clamber in pursuit of the 'wizened youth' who still haunts Father Lacroix all these years later. TRANSLATED BY CHRIS ANDREWS 'The wit, the horror, the ambition, the strangeness; Roberto Bolano's work is a sprawling labyrinth of surprise, bold invention, and images that will live with you forever' Chris Power 'Few are the writers who have mastered the alchemy of turning the trivial into the sublime, the everyday into adventure. Bolano is among the best at this diabolical skill' Georgi Gospodinov, author of Time Shelter

Alberto Ruiz-Tagle was once the quiet, unknowable, unpromising member of Chile’s young poetry scene. But the military coup of 1973 sees Alberto reborn as Chile’s leading celebrity poet, Carlos Wieder. Known for his daring sky poems, penned in smoke high above the cities, Weider’s dazzling trajectory is a cause for astonishment and speculation amongst his old poetry friends. Where did this talent suddenly spring from? And, how is it connected to the disappearance of the beautiful Garmendia twins? Told from across the years in exile in Europe, the narrator’s attempts to trace the fate of his old circle will lead him to one last confrontation with the brutality of their generation.