An unnamed narrator attempts to piece together the life & works of an enigmatic would-be poet turned military assassin during Pinochet`s regime in Chile. In the early 1970s Alberto Ruiz-Tagle was a little-known poet living in southern Chile. After the military coup of 1973 that brought in the dictatorship of General Pinochet, he embarked upon a new career that involved him in committing murder & other brutalities, & subsequently led to his emergence as a lieutenant in the Chilean air force under his actual name, Carlos Wieder. Some time later the narrator, now held in a prison camp, looks up & sees a World War II airplane writing the first words of the ” Book of Genesis” in smoke in the sky. The aviator is none other Carlos Wieder, launching his own version of the New Chilean Poetry. Roberto Bolano`s novel is a chilling investigation of the fascist mentality & the limits of evil, as seen in its effects on a literary sensibility, as well as a gripping intellectual thriller. It shows a great writer at the height of his powers.