Crushed by a devastating scandal, university professor Óscar Amalfitano flees Barcelona for Santa Teresa, a Mexican city close to the U.S. border, where women are being killed in staggering numbers. There, Amalfitano begins an affair with Castillo, a young forger of Larry Rivers paintings, while his daughter, Rosa, reeling from the weight of his secrets, seeks solace in a romance of her own. Yet when she finds her father in bed with Castillo, Rosa is confronted with the full force of her crisis.
What follows is an intimate police investigation of Amalfitano, leading to a finale of euphoria and heartbreak. Featuring characters and stories from The Savage Detectives and 2666, Roberto Bolaño's Woes of the True Policeman mines the depths of art, memory, and desire and marks the culmination of one of the great careers of world literature.
Taking us back to the world and characters of his acclaimed masterpiece, 2666, Woes of the True Policeman is Roberto Bolaño’s last, unfinished, novel.
When Óscar Amalfitano begins an impulsive affair with one of his students at the University of Barcelona, he has no idea where it will lead. More than his turbulent revolutionary past, or the death of his beautiful wife, the scandalous exposure of this relationship will change him for ever.
Forced to flee with his seventeen-year-old daughter, Amalfitano finds himself in Santa Teresa, a sprawling town on the US–Mexico border. Haunted by dark tales of murdered women, this mythical place is populated by mysterious characters. We meet Castillo, who makes his living selling his forgeries of Larry Rivers paintings to wealthy Texans; Pancho Monje, a son born of six generations of foundlings; and Arcimboldi, a magician and writer whose work has been important to Amalfitano for some time, but whose return to prominence is just beginning.
Woes of the True Policeman is an exciting, kaleidoscopic novel, lyrical and intense yet darkly humorous. Exploring the limits of memory and the power of art, it returns to the world and characters of Bolaño’s masterpiece, 2666, and marks the culmination of one of the great careers of world literature.
