Roberto Bolaño, "William Burns"


A guy is charged with protecting two women in a remote house with a whole lot of windows.

Anyway, these women had two dogs, a big one and a little one. And I never knew which dog belonged to which woman.

(from The New Yorker, Feb. 8. 2010)

This a weird story. The narrator contradicts himself without blinking and the whole thing is told in a dreamlike fog, where you are told about things you can’t picture, where the characters are strangely accepting of the strangeness.

Read it here.

One thought on “Roberto Bolaño, "William Burns"

  1. Marianne

    It was nightmarish. I actually loved it. It’s only the second story by Roberto Bolaño I have read (The first one I read several years ago, also in The New Yorker)

    Reply

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