Interest in Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño has only increased since his death at the age of 50 in 2003. Given the amount of time he lived in Mexico City and his reputation as a rebellious anti-establishment upstart, his work has a considerable following here. Not surprisingly, the city is the setting for a considerble amount of his writing, from novels like The Savage Detectives to short stories such as “Mexican Manifesto.” At times, the city even seems like a character. You can’t visit many of the places mentioned in these pieces; most of the businesses’ real names weren’t the ones Bolaño gave them in his writing. But you can visit Cafe La Habana on Calle Bucareli, which Bolaño thinly disguised with the name Cafe Quito, and you can see the outside of the home where he spent his teenage years- Samuel 27 in Colonia Guadalupe Tepeyac. When asked by a local newspaper in 2013 whether they knew the famous tenant that occupied their home before them, the family currently living at Samuel 27 said they’d never heard of Bolaño.
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Roberto Bolaño's Mexico City
Interest in Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño has only increased since his death at the age of 50 in 2003. Given the amount of time he lived in Mexico City and his reputation as a rebellious anti-establishment upstart, his work has a considerable following here. Not surprisingly, the city is the setting for a considerble amount of his writing, from novels like The Savage Detectives to short stories such as “Mexican Manifesto.” At times, the city even seems like a character. You can’t visit many of the places mentioned in these pieces; most of the businesses’ real names weren’t the ones Bolaño gave them in his writing. But you can visit Cafe La Habana on Calle Bucareli, which Bolaño thinly disguised with the name Cafe Quito, and you can see the outside of the home where he spent his teenage years- Samuel 27 in Colonia Guadalupe Tepeyac. When asked by a local newspaper in 2013 whether they knew the famous tenant that occupied their home before them, the family currently living at Samuel 27 said they’d never heard of Bolaño.
