The Savage Detectives

It sometimes seems like the American reading public only makes room for one new translated superstar at a time, and already it's hard to recall just what a revelation it was when the Chilean-Mexican-Spanish novelist Roberto Bolaño burst into the English-reading world just after his premature death in 2003. Many of his books have been published since, some skinny and some fat, but this remains my favorite, a novel of immense charm and scope that keeps veering away from the story you think it has set out to tell. For a story about absence and exile, it's wonderfully full of tale after tale: some giddy, some sad, some terrifying. It's a book that feels like it contains everything, but could always hold more.