Roberto Bolaño was born in Santiago de Chile in 1953, the son of León Bolaño, a truck driver and amateur boxer, and Victoria Ávalos, a schoolteacher. As a child, he lived in Viña del Mar and Quilpué, and spent much of his adolescence in Los Ángeles in the south of Chile. In 1968, when he was fifteen years old, Bolaño and his family moved to Mexico City. Bolaño rapidly immersed himself in the urban and cultural life of Mexico City. Among his early literary influences were Carlos Fuentes’s sprawling urban novel,

La región más transparente

[Where the Air Is Clear] (1958) and the writers of the Mexican

onda

movement José Agustín and Gustavo Sainz. By the time he was seventeen he was writing poems and plays (which do not survive), and decided to quit secondary school in order to…

2997 words

Citation: Lopez-Vicuna, Ignacio. "Roberto Bolaño Ávalos". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 23 December 2010 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=12552, accessed 19 March 2024.]

12552 Roberto Bolaño Ávalos 1 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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