amulet

Amuleto

Douban

NeoDB

★Translated by renowned Spanish translator Zhao Deming, highly recommended

★Best contemporary Spanish-language writer, Bolaño, author of "2666", writes youth poems from a female perspective

★The Amulet is the only work in Bolaño's entire oeuvre that contains the number "2666"

I, Auxilio, am a poet, known as the mother of Mexican poetry. I arrived in Mexico alone from Uruguay in 1967, or 1965, or 1962. I found refuge under the tutelage of two highly regarded Spanish writers and willingly worked as their cleaning lady. One of them was the author of the poetry collection I was reading while trapped in the women's restroom of the Philosophy and Literature Department when the army occupied the university and arrested students. But I also had my own life. I lived in Naples, Rome, and the Atenor Salas district. I lost my books and my clothes. But soon I found other books and other clothes. The university offered me some unimportant temporary jobs, which were then taken back.

I'm tall, thin, blond, and missing several crucial teeth. I have to cover my mouth when I talk and laugh, and I'm even embarrassed to kiss. I met seventeen-year-old Arturo Belano, a friend of his family, and had an unforgettable adventure with him...

The work, imbued with a tragic and poignant atmosphere, presents a historical landscape of melancholy and violence in Latin America, and represents the best response that an artistic individual can offer in this context. Writer Francisco Goldman considers this work to be Bolaño's most unique autobiography, and one of his most creative and powerful works.

Although this book is one of Bolaño's shorter novels, it rivals his two masterpieces, The Savage Detectives and 2666, in sheer force. It possesses a surreal quality, weaving together past and future, time and space, and memory. It serves as an irreplaceable bridge between 2666 and The Savage Detectives, and is an essential piece in Bolaño's oeuvre. However, The Amulet itself functions as a sophisticated allegory.

This work was first published in Spanish in 1999, after The Savage Detectives (1998). An English edition was published in 2006. This book is directly connected to The Savage Detectives. Its heroine is Auxilio, the self-narrator of a separate chapter in The Savage Detectives. In that chapter, she describes hiding in a university women's restroom, trapped for 12 days, and surviving a SWAT police crackdown. In this work, Bolaño employs a rare female perspective throughout, describing Auxilio's life in Mexico in the 1960s and 1970s: her turbulent life, her missing teeth, and her bar life. It also captures the shared memories of poetry and literature of the next generation of young poets from a poetic perspective, and includes stories of Auxilio and several characters who appeared in The Savage Detectives, such as Arturo Belano, Elena, Remedios, and Serpas, with Che Guevara also appearing.

The word "talisman" doesn't appear until the very end. Its meaning is profound. It represents the home the heroine has long sought, and, in a broader sense, a confession to a generation of young people. This amulet is your courage, your mindset, and everything you believe in.

2023-09-01

上海人民出版社

Century Wenjing

160

9787208113060