Enciclopedia de la Literatura en México

The savage detectives

In this dazzling novel, the book that established his international reputation, Roberto Bolaño tells the story of two modern-day Quixotes--the last survivors of an underground literary movement, perhaps of literature itself--on a tragicomic quest through a darkening, entropic universe: our own. The Savage Detectives is an exuberant, raunchy, wildly inventive, and ambitious novel from one of the greatest Latin American authors of our age.

* Esta contraportada corresponde a la edición de 2008. La Enciclopedia de la literatura en México no se hace responsable de los contenidos y puntos de vista vertidos en ella.


First published in Spanish in 1998, The Savage Detectives was immediately hailed as a critical success, wining the Herralde Prize and the Rómulo Gallegos Prize. But with the 2007 English-language translation the book became more than a bestseller – it began the global sensation of Bolañomania.

New Year’s Eve 1975, Mexico City. Two hunted men leave town in a hurry, on the desert-bound trail of a vanished poet. Spanning two decades and crossing continents, this remarkable quest is a journey told and shared by a generation of lovers, rebels and readers, whose testimonies are woven together into one of the most dazzling Latin American novels of the twentieth century.

In 2012 Picador celebrated its 40th anniversary. During that time we have published many prize-winning and bestselling authors including Bret Easton Ellis and Cormac McCarthy, Alice Sebold and Helen Fielding, Graham Swift and Alan Hollinghurst. Years later, Picador continue to bring readers the very best contemporary fiction, non-fiction and poetry from across the globe.

* Esta contraportada corresponde a la edición de 2012. La Enciclopedia de la literatura en México no se hace responsable de los contenidos y puntos de vista vertidos en ella.