Roberto Bolaño (April 28, 1953 - July 15, 2003) was a Chilean novelist and poet, winner of the prestigious Rómulo Gallegos Prize for his novel Los detectives salvajes (The Savage Detectives) in 1999. For most of his life he was a nomad, living at one time or another in Chile, Mexico, El Salvador, France and finally Spain where he would settle in the small town of Blanes . In the seventies he became a Trotskyist and founding member of the infrarrealismo a small reaching poetic movement.

The Savage Detectives has been compared by Jorge Edwards to Julio Cortázar's Rayuela and José Lezama Lima's Paradiso.

Fiction

• La pista de hielo (1993)
• Literatura nazi en América (1996)
• Estrella distante (Distant Star) (1996)
• Llamadas telefónicas (1997)
• Los detectives salvajes (The Savage Detectives) (1998)
• Amuleto (1999)
• Monsieur Pain (1999)
• Nocturno de Chile (By night in Chile) (2000)
• Consejos de un discípulo de Morrison a un fanático de Joyce (1999)
• Los perros románticos (2000)
• Putas Asesinas (2001)
• Amberes (2002)
• Una novelita lumpen (2002)
• El gaucho insufrible (2003)
• 2666 (2004)

Poetry

• Tres (2000)

Non Fiction

• Entre paréntesis (2004)