Written by Chilean author Roberto Bolano, The Savage Detectives tells the story of the search for a Mexican poet from the 1920s called Cesárea Tinajero. The novel is set in the late 1970s and chronicles two Latin poets' search for the Tinajero above. But the two men run into trouble on their way to find Tinajero. Having witnessed a violent showdown, the men spend the next twenty years of their young lives on the run from the people searching for them.
When it was released, The Savage Detectives received incredibly positive reviews. Kirkus Reviews, for example, loved the book and called it "One of the most entertaining books about writers and their discontents since Boswell’s Life of Johnson. A brilliant novel, fully deserving of its high international reputation." Publishers Weekly thought similarly, writing that "Bolaño fashions an engrossing lost world of youth and utopian ambition, as particular and vivid as it is sad and uncontainable."
