“I write to remember past stories and laugh at them or turn them into others, inventing a new ending,” admitted Roberto Bolaño. These words of the writer can well be attributed to both works included in the book, although there is nothing funny in them . On the contrary, if not for Bolaño’s subtle irony, they would make a difficult impression, since they are mainly about the dark 70s, when murders were committed and people disappeared in Chile, as well as about the echoes of this time, when memory and the desire for revenge give no rest. And even though the characters in the novels are writers, poets, critics, and other characters from the literary and semi-literary environment, immersed in their own closed world, nothing can protect them from bitter reality. The promising young poet Alberto Ruiz-Tagle turns into Carlos Wieder during the years of dictatorship, whose “name comes up in the torture and missing persons investigation,” and although he is never brought to justice, he is met with retribution in the form of an elderly man, a former police officer under Allende’s democratic government.