With a new afterword by Natasha Wimmer 'Savagely comic yet equally tender ...This novel is an elegy for a generation' Independent 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, theirs is a remarkable quest through a darkening universe our own. It 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. 'The comic frenzy, the inventiveness of character and situation, and the mood-soaked depiction of 1970s Mexico is delightful' Times Literary Supplement 'A portrait of people for whom literature is bread and water, sex and death. The abiding message to be taken from Bolano's novel, and maybe from his fraught life, too: books matter' GQ 'It's no exaggeration to call Bolano a genius. The Savage Detectives alone should grant him immortality' Washington Post 'Bolano makes you feel changed for having read him; he adjusts your angle of view on the world' Guardian