A Little Lumpen Novelita

By: Roberto Bolaño, Natasha Wimmer - translator

Narrated by: Gabra Zackman

Brought to you by Penguin.

'Now I am a mother and a married woman, but not long ago I led a life of crime'

So begins Bianca’s tale of growing up the hard way. Orphaned overnight as a teenager, she drops out of school and drifts into the bad company of two criminals her brother brings home. As the four of them plot a fantastical crime, Bianca learns she can drift even lower...

Electric and tense with foreboding, A Little Lumpen Novelita - one of the last novellas Roberto Bolaño published – delivers a fractured fairy tale of taking control of one's fate.

TRANSLATED BY NATASHA WIMMER

‘Bolaño has proven that literature can do everything’ The New York Times

‘The man was a flat-out genius, one of the greatest writers of our time’ Paul Auster

©2002 Roberto Bolaño, Translation copyright 2014 by Natasha Wimmer (P)2025 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

One of the best books of the year–A Little Lumpen Novelita feels as substantial as a book three times as long. This is a glittering gem, as maddening and haunting as you'd expect from Bolano.

Electrifying.

As for Bolano, what can one say? One of our greatest writers, a straight colossus. (Junot Diaz)

Bolano has proven that literature can do everything.

Bolano has joined the immortals.

The very highest level of literary achievement. (Colm Tóbín)

Roberto Bolano was an exemplary literary rebel. To drag fiction toward the unknown, he had to go there himself, and there invent a method with which to represent it. Since the unknown place was reality, the results were multi-dimensional.

Gritty, compelling, profound.