"Extraordinarily beautiful . . . [Like] a dream from which we awake inspired to look more attentively at the world."
-Francine Prose, The New York Times Book Review

A journey to Acapulco gradually becomes a descent into the underworld. An elderly South American writer instructs a protégé in the subterfuges of entering work for provincial literary prizes. A litany unfolds, offering sixty-nine reasons why not to dance with Pablo Neruda. "The melancholy folklore of exile," as Roberto Bolaño once put it, pervades the fourteen haunting stories of Last Evenings on Earth. Set in the Chilean exile diaspora of Latin America and Europe, and peopled by Bolaño's beloved "failed generation," this collection was the first to introduce the English-speaking world to Bolaño's immeasurable gifts as a short-story writer.