RIP Roberto, you would've loved Warhammer 40k.

Takes place in the same vicinity / location as The Ice Rink (Del Mar Hotal and Costa Brava, just called "Z" in TIR), probably written around the same time, by hand, across hundreds of pages of notes. Only digitized the first 60pp or so before his death, later completed by his family/estate. I have to imagine that they remained faithful because –despite the fact that this novel reads unlike anything else he published– it is consistent from the get-go. Far more Nabokovian in the profile of an aristocrat losing his mind over a problematic board game. It is still Bolañean in the sense that there's ominous, implacable characters doing nightmarish things on the fringe of the story, unresolved deaths, eroticism (though, humorously, nothing –for Udo, at least– ever exceeds kissing, much to his frustration)

The part about

the killer and his scarred torso looms over Europe.

immediately following a phone call b/w Udo and Conrad who think that El Quemado ("the burnt") is a Mephistopholean manifestation of the devil.

Critics seem to think it underdeveloped and perhaps better left unpublished – to which I wonder why they're reading Bolaño if they found this novel to feature characters left underdeveloped. Sure it borders on thematically incoherent, but that's consistent with his encompassing cynicism. I loved it.

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