The Skating Rink

“One of the greatest and most influential modern writers.” —James Wood, The New York Times Book Review “Bolaño is the real thing.” —n+1 In the quiet Spanish seaside town of Z, a horrific crime has been committed: a coldblooded murder on a secret ice rink in the abandoned Palacio Benvingut. Who has been killed, by whom, and why? A tense, taut, utterly gripping narrative emerges from the jagged memories and whispered testimonies of our suspects: Remo Morán, a once poet at the helm of Z’s tourist industry; Gaspar Heredia, another once poet Remo sets up with a night watchman job at a seedy local campground; and Enric Rosquelles, a corrupt civil servant and tortured romantic. And at the center of their orbit is the beautiful, iron-willed figure skater Nuria Martí, just dropped from the Spanish national team and desperate to reclaim her place. As these characters fatefully collide, this tale of obsession, corruption, passion, and violence builds toward its inevitable, bloody conclusion. Haunting and propulsive, Roberto Bolaño’s The Skating Rink is a noir like no other: one that exposes the darkest sides of human nature and then angles its knife toward our very notion of truth.