«Amuleto es una obra menor, intimista, con una voz delirante que no ofrece contrapuntos, o que ofrece pocos contrapuntos. Es una obra de cmara o de un solo instrumento. Eso s de un solo instrumento, pero para alguien que sepa dar el callo con ese instrumento. --Roberto Bolao Auxilio Lacouture se considera a s misma «la madre de todos los mexicanos y «la madre de la poesa mexicana . Uruguaya de nacimiento, residente de Mxico D.F., abonada a los trabajos humildes y espordicos durante el da, incansablemente inmersa en la bohemia nocturna de la ciudad, todo cambia para ella el 18 de septiembre de 1968, cuando el ejrcito toma posesin del campus de la Universidad Nacional Autnoma de Mxico y ella queda encerrada en los baos de la facultad de filosofa y letras. A lo largo de trece das de encierro y aislamiento forzado, por sus ojos transitan la poetisa Lilian Serpes, amante a su vez del Che Guevara; los poetas espaoles Len Felipe y Pedro Garfias; el malogrado alter ego de Bolao Arturo Belano. De este modo, Auxilio reflexiona sobre la senda y los pasos dejados atrs y los que, an y cada vez ms, restan sumidos en las sombras de un pas de incierto futuro. ENGLISH DESCRIPTION A tour de force, Amulet is a highly charged first-person, semi-hallucinatory novel that embodies in one woman's voice the melancholy and violent recent history of Latin America. Amulet is a monologue, like Bolano's acclaimed debut in English, By Night in Chile. The speaker is Auxilio Lacouture, a Uruguayan woman who moved to Mexico in the 1960s, becoming the "Mother of Mexican Poetry," hanging out with the young poets in the cafs and bars of the University. She's tall, thin, and blonde, and her favorite young poet in the 1970s is none other than Arturo Belano (Bolano's fictional stand-in throughout his books). As well as her young poets, Auxilio recalls three remarkable women: the melancholic young philosopher Elena, the exiled Catalan painter Remedios Varo, and Lilian Serpas, a poet who once slept with Che Guevara. And in the course of her imaginary visit to the house of Remedios Varo, Auxilio sees an uncanny landscape, a kind of chasm. This chasm reappears in a vision at the end of the book: an army of children is marching toward it, singing as they go. The children are the idealistic young Latin Americans who came to maturity in the '70s, and the last words of the novel are: "And that song is our amulet."
«Amuleto es una obra menor, intimista, con una voz delirante que no ofrece contrapuntos, o que ofrece pocos contrapuntos. Es una obra de cmara o de un solo instrumento. Eso s de un solo instrumento, pero para alguien que sepa dar el callo con ese instrumento. --Roberto Bolao Auxilio Lacouture se considera a s misma «la madre de todos los mexicanos y «la madre de la poesa mexicana . Uruguaya de nacimiento, residente de Mxico D.F., abonada a los trabajos humildes y espordicos durante el da, incansablemente inmersa en la bohemia nocturna de la ciudad, todo cambia para ella el 18 de septiembre de 1968, cuando el ejrcito toma posesin del campus de la Universidad Nacional Autnoma de Mxico y ella queda encerrada en los baos de la facultad de filosofa y letras. A lo largo de trece das de encierro y aislamiento forzado, por sus ojos transitan la poetisa Lilian Serpes, amante a su vez del Che Guevara; los poetas espaoles Len Felipe y Pedro Garfias; el malogrado alter ego de Bolao Arturo Belano. De este modo, Auxilio reflexiona sobre la senda y los pasos dejados atrs y los que, an y cada vez ms, restan sumidos en las sombras de un pas de incierto futuro. ENGLISH DESCRIPTION A tour de force, Amulet is a highly charged first-person, semi-hallucinatory novel that embodies in one woman's voice the melancholy and violent recent history of Latin America. Amulet is a monologue, like Bolano's acclaimed debut in English, By Night in Chile. The speaker is Auxilio Lacouture, a Uruguayan woman who moved to Mexico in the 1960s, becoming the "Mother of Mexican Poetry," hanging out with the young poets in the cafs and bars of the University. She's tall, thin, and blonde, and her favorite young poet in the 1970s is none other than Arturo Belano (Bolano's fictional stand-in throughout his books). As well as her young poets, Auxilio recalls three remarkable women: the melancholic young philosopher Elena, the exiled Catalan painter Remedios Varo, and Lilian Serpas, a poet who once slept with Che Guevara. And in the course of her imaginary visit to the house of Remedios Varo, Auxilio sees an uncanny landscape, a kind of chasm. This chasm reappears in a vision at the end of the book: an army of children is marching toward it, singing as they go. The children are the idealistic young Latin Americans who came to maturity in the '70s, and the last words of the novel are: "And that song is our amulet."
