Puttane assassine

The book was first published in 2001 by the publisher Anagrama, and it was dedicated to his children, Alexandra and Lautaro Bolaño, and to his friends Marcial Cortés-Monroy and Alexandra Edwards, the latter being the director of the Chilean magazine Paula. As always, the extent of Roberto Bolaño’s abuse of reading in his life as a writer is palpable. The original language volume contains about 220/230 pages: some of the stories are about real people. The narrative highlights protagonists in absolute solitude who are searching for a yet undefined destination.
The content is composed of various chapters, while the seventh story, Putas asesinas, gives the book its title. Among the various paragraphs and stories, specifically dedicated to some friends and authors, you can find:

EL OJO SILVA
The narrator is in Berlin with Ojo Silva, a professional photographer and homosexual man. In the context of the narrative, he is an old friend from Chile whom he had met while studying in the Mexican Federal District. It is an interesting short story. It narrates that during a reportage in India, a person became involved because he met a pimp: a frequenter of brothels who, when confronted with pedophilia, justifies himself with religious arguments. The story was dedicated to Rodrigo Pinto, María, and Andrés Braithwaite.

GÓMEZ PALACIO
To create a literary work, the narrator decides to go to the state of Durango, from there to move to the Mexican city of Gómez Palacio: the city is described as a location in the middle of the desert, a vision of the city that depresses the narrator. The only circumstance that can alleviate the boredom that will afflict him is car races and the director of Fine Arts.

ÚLTIMOS ATARDECERES EN LA TIERRA
The twenty-year-old Arturo Belano (an alter ego of Roberto Bolaño himself) and his father leave the Mexican Federal District in 1975 for a brief period to spend a few days of vacation in Acapulco. Although they are together, their relationship is distant: while the twenty-year-old reads the dark thoughts and memories that emerge regarding the surrealist poet Gui Rosey, his father seeks entertainment with the company of strangers and prostitutes.

DÍAS DE 1978
In 1978, Arturo Belano moved from Mexico to Barcelona, Spain, for a short period. During a party with the village inhabitants, he confronts a Chilean man: from this event, Belano occasionally begins to receive news of a girl, a woman for whom Arturo begins to feel a growing interest. At a certain point, Belano will learn that the Chilean compatriot has been hospitalized in Catalonia at the Sant Boi Mental Health Center. The two will see each other for the last time at a friend's house, and this time Belano suggests they watch a final film together set in medieval Russia.

VAGABUNDO EN FRANCIA Y BÉLGICA
This time Belano is an adult and is on vacation in Paris. There he will buy a French literature magazine, a monograph dedicated to graphology featuring a fictitious entity from Belgium called Henri Lefebvre: the name of an unknown writer from Masnuy-Saint-Jean in the province of Hainaut, who died the same year as the Chilean coup d'état in 1973. Continuing his journey, the protagonist stops in Brussels, where he meets the daughter of an old left-wing Chilean military man, and from there he will continue towards Lefebvre's city, a place unknown to his own business trip. During the trip, Belano eats and associates with prostitutes.

PREFIGURACIÓN DE LALO CURA
Lalo Cura is the son of a Colombian priest and a pornographic actress. He recalls the pornographic films of the German director Helmut Bittrich, works in which his mother and aunt worked. One of the actors in the films, named Pajarito Gómez, maintained notable importance in the writer's life over time: this character, on the part of the author Roberto Bolaño, is present in the story of the novel 2666; with the name Pancho Monje in the book Los sinsabores del verdadero Policía; while in the book Llamadas Telefónicas he is mentioned with the name Pancho Monge.

PUTAS ASESINAS
A Spanish nationalist is fascinated by his native land's national football team. He appears together with acquaintances and Spanish athletes: this man was wanted at the stadium by a woman who tried to seduce him, who took him home, had sex with him, and then kidnapped him. The story was dedicated to Teresa Ariño.

EL RETORNO
A man dies of cardiac arrest in a Parisian nightclub, and his soul or ghost, once it leaves the corpse, remains on the ground floor. This spirit will follow the body which is initially taken to the morgue by a third person and then to the house of Jean-Claude Villeneuve, a well-known French fashion designer who is a necrophile.

BUBA
Acevedo is a Chilean footballer who, to overcome superstition, goes with prostitutes. Since getting an injury, he will learn to play football well. He will become part of the Barcelona Football Club, where he makes friends with the players Herrera and Buba, a Spaniard and an African. The latter advises using black magic to climb the football rankings. The story was dedicated to Juan Villoro.

DENTISTA
In 1986, the narrator travels from the Mexican Federal District to Irapuato to visit a dentist friend. The two are not having a good period: the first has reached the end of the relationship with his partner, while the other will tell him the story about the death of a poor, mistreated old man. Afterwards, the book's story focuses on the dentist's life: his negative experience with one of his favorite painters, and the character of José Ramírez, the latter being a humble teenager who seems to be an extraordinary narrator to both of them.

FOTOS
This time an adult Belano is facing a bad trip in the Republic of Liberia, and he is accompanied only by a rich French anthology of poets: "La poésie Contemporaine de langue française depuis 1945." In this anthology, Belano manages to read various authors, sees photographs, and concentrates on some, including that of Nadia Tuéni, who is particularly beautiful. The story was detailed in part in the book Los detectives salvajes.

CARNET DE BAILE
In 69 lines, Bolaño will wander concerning Pablo Neruda and his literary works: from a divergence of thought, he will refer to other authors, recall passages from his life, his arrest during the Chilean coup in 1973, and the meeting he had in Mexico with Alejandro Jodorowsky.

ENCUENTRO CON ENRIQUE LIHN
Bolaño describes a dream that occurs in 1999. This time he sees the ghost of Enrique Lihn, who died in 1988. The two in this dream were friends between 1981 and 1982. The story was dedicated to Celina Manzoni.

As in other books, many of Roberto Bolaño's stories are narrated by someone who could be his alter ego: a second person or personality within the same text, and for literary analysis, it is generally used to describe psychologically opposing characters. In this novel, the Chilean writer recognized the 'other self' with the fictional author Arturo Belano.