“With words alone, Bolaño summons a visual world, creating in this book, as in his others, what Mario Vargas Llosa has called ‘images and fantasies for posterity’… admirers will find in these themes and players a satisfying proleptic glimpse of his picaresque masterpiece, 1998’s The Savage Detectives… [This] gem-choked puzzle of a book… serves as a key to Bolano’s later work, unlocking clues to his abiding obsessions … [and] is a hardy forerunner that stands on its own.” (The New York Times Book Review)

“[Bolaño] is a kinetic, epiphanic writer, and even his earliest works tremble like a whirring, unpredictable machine...The Spirit of Science Fiction functions as a kind of key to the jeweled box of Bolaño’s fictions, an index of the images that would come to obsess him.... longtime Bolaño fans will doubtless enjoy this familiar cocktail of sorrow and ecstasy.” (Paris Review)

“The Spirit of Science Fiction is structured unconventionally, enticing the reader to solve its mysteries. Bolaño adroitly braids three related narratives... an entertaining, lyrical and accomplished novel.” (Wall Street Journal)

“This is vintage Bolaño: a lusty and rapturous shaggy-dog tale of Latin American exiles and bohemian youth.” (Vanityfair.com)