Author: Roberto Bolaño
- Fiction
- Anagrama, Editorial S.A.
- ISBN: 978-8433924452
- Release Date: 04-01-2013
Synopsis
Roberto Bolaño takes us into an odd, dark, but comic underworld in this strangely tender noir novel.
A Bolaño classic. The Peruvian poet César Vallejo is in the hospital, afflicted with an undiagnosed illness and unable to stop hiccuping. His wife calls on an acquaintance of her friend Madame Reynaud: the mesmerist Pierre Pain. Pain, a timid bachelor, is in love with the widow Reynaud and agrees to help. But two mysterious Spanish men follow him and bribe him not to treat Vallejo. Ravaged by guilt and anxiety, Pain does not intend to abandon his new patient, but his access to the hospital is barred and Madame Reynaud mysteriously leaves Paris. Another practitioner of the occult sciences enters the story (working for Generalissimo Franco, using his mesmeric expertise to interrogate prisoners) — as do Mme. Curie, tarot cards, an assassination, and nightmares. Meanwhile, a haunted Monsieur Pain wanders the crepuscular, rainy streets of Paris. . . .
A disciple of Mesmer is put in charge of curing the hypochondria of a poor South American abandoned in a Paris hospital in the spring of 1938. It seems as though nothing bad could possibly happen, until the hypnotist Pierre Pain becomes embroiled in intrigue which plans ritual assassination of planetary proportions. Only Pierre Pain realises what is going on behind the scenes, but he is no hero, he is an ordinary man and the least inclined to embark on an adventure of life and death where love, solitude, and the value of the human being is put at risk.
"Paris, 1938. The Peruvian poet Cesar Vallejo is in the hospital, unable to stop hiccuping. His wife calls on an acquaintance of her friend Madame Reynaud: the mesmerist Monsieur Pain. A timid bachelor, Pain is in love with the widow Reynaud, and agrees to try to use his powers to help save the poet's life. But then two mysterious Spanish agents intervene, determined to keep him from treating the patient." "Terrible anxiety enters the story - along with another practitioner of the occult sciences, tarot cards, nightmares, Mme Curie, WWII, hopeless love, and an assassination. Poor Monsieur Pain, haunted and guilty, wanders the crepuscular, rainy streets of Paris." Monsieur Pain creates a galaxy of historical figures (Cesar Vallejo and his wife Georgette, the mesmerist Pierre Pain, and Mme Cruie and her daughter Irene all actually existed) only to explode it gleefully in a final "Epilogue for Voices," scattering the docudrama and opening the book onto vast, untold hinterlands.
A un discípulo de Mesmer le encargan que cure el hipo que sufre un sudamericano pobre abandonado en un hospital de París en la primavera de 1938. En apariencia, nada puede pasar. Sin embargo el mesmerista Pierre Pain se verá envuelto en una intriga en donde se planea un asesinato ritual de proporciones planetarias. ¿Quién es el sudamericano que agoniza en el hospital Arago? ¿Por qué unas fuerzas ocultas desean su muerte? ¿Qué se pierde y qué se gana con esa muerte? Sólo Pierre Pain se da cuenta de lo que se teje entre bastidores. Y él no es un héroe sino un hombre común y corriente: solitario, secretamente enamorado de madame Reynaud, delicado, pacífico, descreído, el menos indicado para intentar resolver una historia extraordinaria a mitad de camino entre la casualidad y la causalidad, una aventura a vida o muerte en donde se pondrá en juego el amor, la soledad, la dignidad y el valor del ser humano, el delirio, la irremediable tristeza.
