The Third Reich by Roberto Bolaño


The Third Reich
Title : The Third Reich
Author :
Rating :
ISBN : 0374275629
ISBN-10 : 9780374275624
Language : English
Format Type : Hardcover
Number of Pages : 277
Publication : First published January 1, 1989

On vacation with his girlfriend, Ingeborg, the German war games champion Udo Berger returns to a small town on the Costa Brava where he spent the summers of his childhood. Soon they meet another vacationing German couple, Charly and Hanna, who introduce them to a band of locals—the Wolf, the Lamb, and El Quemado—and to the darker side of life in a resort town.

Late one night, Charly disappears without a trace, and Udo’s well-ordered life is thrown into upheaval; while Ingeborg and Hanna return to their lives in Germany, he refuses to leave the hotel. Soon he and El Quemado are enmeshed in a round of Third Reich, Udo’s favorite World War II strategy game, and Udo discovers that the game’s consequences may be all too real.

Written in 1989 and found among Roberto Bolaño’s papers after his death, The Third Reich is a stunning exploration of memory and violence. Reading this quick, visceral novel, we see a world-class writer coming into his own—and exploring for the first time the themes that would define his masterpieces The Savage Detectives and 2666.

The Third Reich Reviews

  • Edward

    I have read six novels by Bolaño now and feel no closer to an understanding of anything like a definable style to his writing. He does not rely on consistency of form; each novel seems somehow to be approached from a different angle. And though I have enjoyed almost all I have read, my expectations for The Third Reich were nonetheless low, due to its reputation as a lesser work as well as the critical endorsements printed on the covers of the book itself, which ordinarily so unashamed in their praise in this case appear to downplay the novel as one for his die-hard fans only.

    But after finishing The Third Reich I am left wondering if those critics and I had read the same book. I found the novel to be an almost physical experience. From the beginning there builds a pervasive and relentless sense of dread, of unease; a dark undercurrent that seems to induce a nearly palpable vibration. So powerful was this sensation, I felt it seeping into my ordinary waking life. I could not shake it, I felt it even in my dreams, and today I felt the need to reach the end of the novel before it somehow consumed me. This all sounds very excessive and melodramatic (not to mention a little embarrassing), but for me there was something beyond the ordinary intellectual exercise of reading: something visceral, captivating, irresistible.

  • Lee

    At his best Bolano somehow manages to create bizarrely ominous and portentous scenarios out of apparently very little. This is another clever and compelling attack on toxic, regressive men, women struggling to deal with/accommodate them (although why bother, you might think of the motley crew of Blokes in The Third Reich) and the oblique means (and inexorable inevitability) of different types of necessary war. The sublimation of people into game pieces; the failure to afford an equally valuable identity to anyone else. The predisposition to self-destruction via others.

    The real genius of Bolano here is his managing to weave all kinds of large themes into a novel that can easily be read as a straight (though admittedly slow-burning) thriller of a type you could see Roman Polanski or Luca Guadagnino doing something interesting with.

  • Tony

    Would you like to play a game? What kind of game? Oh, a board game. Like Sorry or Monopoly? Yes, like that. What’s it called? It’s called 'The Third Reich'. That ‘Third Reich’? Is there any other? I suppose not. What are the rules? You know the rules. Everybody knows the rules. Who’s who? Since it’s my game and I’m the world champion, I’ll be Germany. You can be the Allies. But I think I know how this turns out. Don’t I? You mean you think History is immutable? Well, there are revisionists, of course; but, yes. Isn’t it? That’s why we have to play the game. Have to? Yes. I’m sorry if I suggested you had a choice. Pull up a seat.

    Udo Berger is vacationing in Spain with his girlfriend Ingeborg. He has a regular job back home in Stuttgart, but he is obsessed with War Games. Udo is prone to obsession. The hotelier, Frau Else, has his attention, his memory and his ardor. (They make out a lot.) On the beach is El Quemado. The Burn Victim. El Quemado, horribly disfigured, rents pedal boats. Soon they reprise World War II, but with die and counters. It doesn’t matter. Never, ever invade Russia in the winter.

    “This kind of game creates a pretty interesting documentary urge. It’s as if we want to know exactly how everything was done in order to change what was done wrong.”
    “I get it,” says the Wolf, understanding nothing, of course.
    “It’s because if you just repeated the whole thing it wouldn’t be fun. It wouldn’t be a game,” whispers the Lamb, sitting down on the rug and blocking the path to the bathroom.
    “Something like that. Though it depends on your motive . . . on your point of view . . .”
    “How many books do you have to read to play well?”
    “All of them and none of them. To play a simple match you just have to know the rules.”

    Story lines interweave here. Reading Bolano, I always get the same feeling, that if I just worked a little harder, thought a little deeper, I could figure out the allegory. Yet I always feel like I have lived it even if I can’t articulate it. Nazis have a way of popping up in Bolano’s work. The invention to do that here is clever, but not as artistically grand as in the 2666 masterpiece.

    ---- ---- ---- ----
    This book is written in relatively short chapters and most of the chapters are titled by date, starting with August 20 and ending, more or less, with October 20.

    Now, my minimal research indicates that Bolano wrote The Third Reich in 1989. Of course, like most of his works, The Third Reich was “found among Bolano’s papers” after his death in 2003. Focus on the dates, please. In the chapter September 11, Udo Berger awakes to a celebration of Catalonia Day. He looks up.

    In the sky a Cessna prop plane strove to trace letters that the strong wind erased before I could make out entire words. I was gripped then by a vast melancholy that seized my belly, my spine, my bottom ribs, until I doubled over under the sunshade!

    I realized in a vague way, as if I were dreaming, that the morning of September 11 was unfolding above the hotel, at the height of the Cessna’s ailerons, and that those of us who were down below that morning, the retirees leaving the hotel, the waiters sitting on the terrace watching the little plane’s maneuvers, Frau Else hard at work, and El Quemado loafing on the beach, were in some way condemned to walk in darkness.

    Wow. I suppose it’s possible that Bolano, a very sick man at and after September 11, 2001, nevertheless went back and rewrote the September 11 chapter. But I like to think otherwise; that in 1989, Roberto Bolano was trying to tell us that History is indeed immutable, and that we play the game again and again.


  • Panagiotis

    Τελικά τι διάβασα; Αυτό αναρωτιέμαι, και μαζί με εμένα φαντάζομαι και άλλοι αναγνώστες. Η καφκική, κατά κάποιο τρόπο ατμόσφαιρα, που δημιουργείται μόνο από ό,τι υπονοείται, από διαλόγους που κρύβουν μυστικά, από την κάθοδο του χαρακτήρα σε έναν σκοτεινό τόπο που έρχεται σε αντίστιξη με το περιβάλλον της καλοκαιρινής Μεσογείου. Ίσως το γεγονός πως ξεμένει τουρίστας στην Ισπανία, με το Φθινόπωρο να μπαίνει, το ξενοδοχείο να αδειάζει γύρω του, να συντροφεύει τις ψυχολογικές αποχρώσεις και παραλλαγές, καθώς και τη συντριβή του στο επιτραπέζιο στρατηγικής από έναν αλλόκοτο, παραμορφωμένο και τρομαχτικό ερημίτη.

    Είναι λατινο-Αμερικάνικη λογοτεχνία αυτή του του Τρίτου Ράιχ. Αλλά, σε αντίθεση με άλλα του Μπολάνο (τουλάχιστον το Άγριοι Ντετέκτιβ που έχω διαβάσει), είναι περιορισμένος ο χειμαρώδης λόγος και η μακροσκελής επιτήδευση του είδους. Ωστόσο ανεξήγητα μεγάλο, με κάνει να απορώ, αλλά και να θαυμάζω τον Μπολάνο για τις επιλογές του. Για ποιόν γράφει;

    Το διαβάζεις για την ατμόσφαιρα που υπονοείται και χτίζεται πάνω σε φαντάσματα σκέψεων και όχι σε κάτι χειροπιαστό. Το διαβάζεις, επίσης, αν θες να πεις πως διάβασες άλλο ένα του Μπολάνο. Κυρίως, αν σε τρώει να διαβάσεις ό, τι αποθεώνει, για έναν ανεξήγητο λόγο κατ΄ εμέ, το κουλτουρέ κατεστημένο αυτού του έρμου του ελληνικού λογοτεχνικού τοπίου. Είναι μια λογοτεχνία που επιβάλλεται από την παράταξη που μάχεται για μια καλή λογοτεχνία στην Ελλάδα, αλλά καμιά φορά περιορίζει το αναγνωστικό κοινό. Δηλαδή, Μπολάνο, λατινική λογοτεχνία και άγιος ο θεός.

    Από εμένα τριαράκι γιατί πέρασα καλά, γιατί καλή είναι και η λατινική Αμερική, αλλά είναι παρεξηγημένη, υπερεκτιμημένη. Μόνο για δεινούς αναγνώστες και βιβλιόφιλους.

  • Kaggelo

    Θα μπορουσα να περασω το υπολοιπο της ζωης μου διαβαζοντας μονο μυθιστορηματα του Roberto Bolaño

  • Javier (off for a while)

    La muerte de Roberto Bolaño en 2003 fue un duro golpe para la literatura en lengua española. Perdíamos a uno de los mejores escritores de su generación ―puede que el mejor―, justo en el momento en que había alcanzado su madurez creativa. Un autor que, en palabras de
    Enrique Vila-Matas, había abierto “las brechas por las que habrán de circular nuevas corrientes literarias del próximo siglo”, como ya hicieran
    Cortázar o
    García Márquez en su momento.
    Por lo que a mí respecta, Bolaño es sin duda uno de mis escritores favoritos. Y al igual que me sucede con otros autores ya desaparecidos, como Cortázar o
    Bernhard, voy dosificando con prudencia rayana en racanería la reserva de títulos de Bolaño que me quedan por leer, sabiendo que ya no se renovará.
    O sí, siete años después de su muerte, Anagrama nos sorprendio con el lanzamiento de un nuevo libro del chileno. No se trataba de una novela montada por su representante a partir de un puñado de notas inconexas, ni de una recopilación de su correspondencia con algún amigo, ni ningún otro producto sólo para fanáticos o estudiosos con los que en ocasiones se intenta rentabilizar la memoria de un escritor desaparecido: El Tercer Reich era una obra inédita y completa de Bolaño y, lo más importante, una buena novela.
    Este "nuevo" libro de Bolaño narra el descenso a los infiernos de Udo, un joven alemán aficionado a los wargames, como lo era el propio Bolaño en la época en que escribió el libro. En realidad, más que un aficionado, es un jugador semiprofesional, campeón de Alemania, obsesionado por el juego. Él y su novia Ingeborg van a pasar unos días de vacaciones ―las primeras que pasan juntos― en la Costa Brava, aunque Udo está más interesado en estudiar las estrategias que empleará en su próxima partida de “El Tercer Reich”, su wargame favorito, que en el sol y en la playa.
    Udo está demasiado seguro y satisfecho de sí mismo para prestar atención a nadie más, pero, arrastrado por su novia, no le queda más remedio que relacionarse con otra pareja de turistas alemanes que introducirá a ambos en la extraña comunidad local, formada por personajes como el Lobo y el Cordero, a ratos estrafalarios, a ratos siniestros; o el Quemado, el misterioso y deforme encargado de los patines de la playa. Unas vacaciones que prometían ser apacibles van a tomar un rumbo imprevisible, mientras que el sopor veraniego se convierte en un mal sueño, asfixiante y siniestro, donde todos parecen ocultar algún oscuro secreto.
    Atrapado entre la precisión matemática de su juego y incertidumbre de una realidad entre cuyos pliegues atisba algo inquietante e indefinido, Udo no puede zafarse de un presentimiento ominoso y perturbador que le empuja a actuar de un modo cada vez más errático, encaminándose a un final que se presiente dramático.
    Si tener en las manos un nuevo libro de Bolaño cuando ya no se esperaban más constituyó una sorpresa mayúscula, su lectura no fue menos sorprendente. Escrito en 1989, en las etapas iniciales de la carrera de Bolaño, El Tercer Reich está aún lejos de
    Los detectives salvajes     o
    2666    . No vamos a encontrar aquí a Arturo Belano, ni a ninguno de esos jóvenes poetas insatisfechos, apasionados e impredecibles que pueblan el territorio mágico del México de Bolaño. De todos modos, no hubieran resultado creíbles lejos del D.F., en un hotelito de la costa española, tomando paella y sangría y tostándose al sol.
    Quizá se echa de menos el derroche de fuerza narrativa y la exuberante nómina de personajes a la que después nos acostumbraría Bolaño, su rabia y su pasión. Su estilo característico, arriesgado e intenso, aún no está del todo formado. De hecho, El Tercer Reich es un texto algo cortazariano: la continua percepción de otra realidad, terrible y perversa, en los objetos o situaciones más cotidianos o el paralelismo entre el juego y la vida real remiten al autor de
    Rayuela    . Y junto a estos temas ya se advierten otros que más tarde serán característicos de la narrativa del chileno, como la búsqueda interminable, la tiranía del deseo o las convulsiones políticas de Latinoamérica.
    Para los que hemos seguido y admirado la obra de Bolaño, El Tercer Reich fue, además de un regalo inesperado, un libro muy interesante, imprescindible para entender la trayectoria del escritor. Pero es más que eso; es un libro muy recomendable por sí mismo, una historia en apariencia intrascendente que atrapa al lector con una tensión creciente y un ritmo lento e hipnótico. ¿Un Bolaño menor? Con eso sería suficiente para asegurarse un hueco en cualquier biblioteca. Pero no, no es una obra menor; es, sencillamente, una de las primeras del autor.

  • roz_anthi

    Ένα στριφνό, παράξενο βιβλίο, όπου τα -εν πολλοίς- ανεξήγητα συμβάντα διέπονται από μια θερινή δυσθυμία, ένα σκοτάδι, αν και τελούν υπό τον Ισπανικό ήλιο, στις ακτές της Μεσογείου. Η πρωτοπρόσωπη εξιστόρηση μας βάζει να παρακολουθούμε από εξαιρετικά κοντά, ίσως σχεδόν κατοψικά, πάνω από το ταμπλώ του Τρίτου Ράιχ, αναμένοντας την επόμενη κίνηση μιας παρτίδας που δεν εξελίσσεται με βάση τα ιστορικά τετελεσμένα, αλλά ακολουθώντας αυτά που θα μπορούσαν ή που θα έπρεπε να είχαν συμβεί, όπως ακριβώς στην
    Η ναζιστική λογοτεχνία στην Αμερική.

    Το δουλεμένο βάθος των χαρακτήρων, η ακρίβεια του συγγραφέα στην μετάδοση νοημάτων, ήλιου, σκόνης και βροχής, η γοητεία του πολέμου με το άγνωστο διακύβευμα, η αίσθηση ότι ξυπνάς και κοιμάσαι ιδρωμένος από την αγωνία του Ούντο, οι μεταστροφές κι η καταληκτική διολίσθηση προς την παράνοια συγκαταλέγονται οπωσδήποτε στις αρετές του βιβλίου.

    Και πιθανόν να είχαμε στα χέρια μας ένα άλλο βιβλίο αν είχε προλάβει να κάνει ο Μπολάνιο τα γλυκά φινιρίσματα που θα του άξιζαν. Αυτό το αθέλητο non finito είναι που σε κάνει εν τέλει να θες κι άλλο Μπολάνιο. Κι είναι πάντα σαν να θες περισσότερο Μπολάνιο.

  • Kyriaki

    Δυο πράγματα για αρχή:
    1. κατέληξα να διαβάζω αυτό το βιβλίο γιατί είναι το μοναδικό του Bolano που έχει η Βιβλιοθήκη.
    2. η σχέση μου με τα παιχνίδια στρατηγικής είναι ελάχιστη....έχω παίξει δυο τρεις φορές σκάκι, άλλες τόσες stratego και άλλες τόσες έχω διαβάσει τις οδηγίες του Risk με την πρόθεση να παίξω αλλά δεν κατάφερα να ποτέ να φτάσω μέχρι εκεί.

    Στο βιβλίο τώρα.....
    Αφού διάβασα καμια 10ριά σελίδες γύρισα να διαβάσω την περίληψη γιατί λόγω τίτλου εσφαλμένα εγώ νόμιζα ότι είχε να κάνει με τον δεύτερο παγκόσμιο πόλεμο.......δεν είχε, οπότε συνέχισα με αναπτερωμένο το ενδιαφέρον μου!
    Στην αρχή διάβαζα με μια περιέργεια. Όσο προχωρούσα άρχιζα να έχω μια απροσδιόριστη και δυσάρεστη αίσθηση ότι κάτι κακό επρόκειτο να συμβεί. Κάποια στιγμή ο ενθουσιασμός μου άρχιζε να φθίνει και δεν είχα φτάσει ούτε στη μέση. Δεν μπορούσα να καταλάβω πού το πάει. Φτάνοντας στη μέση το ενδιαφέρον μου ξαναγύρισε και δεν ξαναέφυγε. Η αίσθηση δε, ότι κάτι κακό θα συμβεί, δεν έφυγε ποτέ, ίσα ίσα όσο προχωρούσε όλο και αυξάνονταν, σχεδόν σε ενοχλητικό βαθμό. Πολύ περίεργο. Και αυτή η ατμόσφαιρα του μυστήρια και μερικές φορές βαριά.
    Νομίζω μου άρεσε. Όχι τόσο όμως, όσο το Λούμπεν Μυθιστορηματάκι (το μοναδικό άλλο δικό του που έχω διαβάσει).
    Κάπου γύρω στο 4 λοιπόν.

  • Dax

    I have decided to tip toe into Bolano's oeuvre with some of his lesser works. A posthumous publication, it's hard to know how to approach 'The Third Reich'. Supposedly written in the late 80's well before his death, Bolano must not have been happy with the novel since he kept it locked away in his files without a plan to publish it. However he felt about it, this novel gave me a taste of that Bolano talent everyone raves about. The story is strange- I don't particularly find war games an interesting topic of conversation- and Udo is not a particularly pleasant character, but there is a wonderful sense of intrigue throughout. One of Bolano's talents that immediately jumped out to me is his ability to establish intense interactions between his characters with very little dialogue. Whether it was between Udo and Frau Else or Udo and El Quemado, even the quietest moments contain a restrained energy. The ending felt a little haphazard (perhaps that is why Bolano never published it himself), but it also felt strangely appropriate for the novel.

    A fairly quick read, I might have stumbled onto a nice jumping off point for Bolano. A strong three stars. I am going to check out the recently released 'Cowboy Graves' before diving into his more highly regarded works.

  • Jonfaith

    The Lamb winked at me and sat on the bed, behind the maid, miming sex in a way that was doubly silent because even his ear-to-ear smile was turned not toward me or Clarita's back but toward... a kind of realm of stone... a silent zone. . .

    This is a strange novel.
    There's blinding sun in Costa Brava.
    There are waves and wells of tourists.
    It is seasonal. It is also the late 1980s.
    The degrees and details ensnare the reader.

    I felt myself transported and likewise confined. Despite our distractions, our esoterica, we remain under the penumbra of history. One shouldn't second-guess the author's intentions regarding the publication of this apparently first novel. The swarm of the quotidian and the ideological provide something less menacing (as was Distant Star) than the creepy. I am not sure what I mean by such unease. I have never been a beach person, the last time I reclined upon the sand amid the heat to read was sixteen years ago, reading Shelby Foote alongside one of the Great Lakes. I prefer to scowl and walk along the ocean, brooding about fetishism and the evolution of yawning as I might have done in Miami and in Morocco.

  • Lee Klein

    Listened to this after my mama found the CDs for $7 and asked if I wanted them (I did). I'd tried to read the hardback when it came out -- didn't so much fail it as I knew I'd need to read it when I had more patience. Glad to have the complete audiobook on my phone now (the future is here). A solid 4.25 stars rounded down since it's not fair to the five-star books of the world to round up. Loved Udo Berger, the meticulous, obsessive narrator gamer, super-German, jotting his daily memories over the course of a six-week dissolution at a beach resort near Barcelona. He says he's writing at first to improve his prose so it'd help him get his gaming articles published. The diaristic POV -- sort of like Guy de Maupassant's
    The Horla -- limits this one's range and its textures but the restriction works as Udo slowly loses it yet controls a retelling that's unaware he's become someone who the hotel staff, for example, revile as a freak. Seeing around the narrator is one of this one's pleasures. Lots of middling to crappy ratings on here can be attributed to tone and pacing: slow and steady, always with an air of menace thanks to respectable/reasonable paranoia (eg, Udo likes to use the phrase "I surmised") re: friends' covert motivations since the narrator's head is so embedded in his elaborate Axis & Allies-like WWII board game. To contradict dunderheaded reviews on here: things DO in fact happen. An arm is broken in a bar fight and a supporting character drowns -- more than enough action for me! Amazing that this wasn't published in his lifetime. I'll have to read it one day properly in print, but as expertly read by a dude with a UK brogue, this may be my favorite non-2666 Bolano yet? An "Ingeborg" appears again, although she's pretty different this time: in this one, she's not batshit before and after WWII, talking about Aztecs and the nutritional value of semen; in this one, she's Udo's absolutely normal girlfriend (there's a devastating line equating her idea of love with shopping sprees such love might entail -- on second listen I realized this refers to Hannah, not Udo's gf). Ingeborg in this one is a stunning beach dweller slathered in cocobutter who doesn't understand her man's obsession with his games, a man who also knows his German lit and in a blazing streak of awesomeness associates German military leaders with German writers (". . . Manstein is comparable to Günter Grass and . . . Rommel is comparable to Celan. In equal manner, Paulus is comparable to Trakl and his predecesor, Reichenau, to Heinrich Mann. Guderian is Jünger’s pair and Kluge Böll’s"). A lot like Coover's
    The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. with higher stakes (invasion of USSR etc) and a sinister alt reality, plus a slow and steady, calculating, questioning, not at all humorous or neurotic or unhinged yet certainly semi-tweaked tone modeled after 20th C. German lit. Interesting to see parallels between this and
    2666, mostly in technique -- the sheets of countries and territories in play like the lists of murdered women. Here, the horrors of WWII are transfused into a game transposed into an elaborate unspecific metaphor, especially as one of Udo's new vacation friends drowns and the season winds down and ends and he spends his time doing a tiny maid, lusting after the sublime hotel owner, and playing marathon nocturnal sessions of The Third Reich game with El Quemado, a muscular South American burn victim poet who lives on the beach and rents paddle boats, one of the most vivid, quietly smoldering, foreboding characters I've met in a while. Also, there's an eeriely prophetic bit written for his Sept 11 diary entry involving cessnas flying overhead and everyone feeling a sense of unspecified dread -- the novel was apparently written in the late '80s, although of course Bolano may have edited it and added to it after 9/11. Like in genre novels, the characters have not much backstory. Udo either is "financially independent" or works at the electric company in Stuttgart (continuity error?), but there's no mention of a trying time from his youth (his family vacationed at the same hotel he's staying in ten years earlier when he was an adolescent and we know not much more) -- ie, history is, interestingly, nonexistent, or maybe it's been subsumed by the war, which would certainly be convenient for the author. Udo seems much older than he is -- about 25. Gonna listen to it again -- will type some more down here when the spirit moves me.

  • Markus

    Bolano has a knack for creating terror from virtually nothing. There are no real pretexts for his moments of tension but they are felt by the reader as if she is reading the most horrifying passage. Personally, I have never read anything that accomplishes this. Its similar to creating mood and tension with music but much more difficult. Its like a dream where your dream self is in great danger but the whole time your conscious self knows its a dream and everything is ok but the two can't communicate-until you wake up.

    Its true, I love Nazis but this book has very little to do with that. The Third Reich is a game and what better way to cloud reality than by approaching the greatest war of all as a board game? The antagonist/narrator spends the whole book on vacation- and what better way to suspend "real life" than on vacation? When the only contact with life back home communicates through strange phone calls and vague childhood memories, reality becomes rootless and uncertain.

    Bolano always claimed to be a fan of detective novels. His books always bear a trace of that but its obvious that his ability could never be bounded by the conventions of that genre. Its like watching Einstein double check a grocery store receipt. There's more going on. In the Third Reich we are not always explicitly told whats going on. As I read that sentence I realize this was true in the late 1930's as well as in Bolano's posthumous work. Its a relatively quick read but just enough to satisfy those of us who still get a little sad when we remember he's gone.

  • Jordi Via

    -¿Sigues visitando la biblioteca, Quemado?
    -Sí.
    -¿Y sólo sacas libros de guerra?
    -Ahora sí, antes no.
    -¿Antes de qué?
    -De empezar a jugar contigo.
    -¿Y qué clase de libros sacabas antes, Quemado?
    -Poemas.
    -¿Libros de poesía? Qué hermoso. ¿Y qué clase de libros eran ésos?
    El Quemado me mira como si estuviera frente a un paleto:
    -Vallejo, Neruda, Lorca... ¿Los conoces?
    -No. ¿Y aprendías los versos de memoria?
    -Tengo muy mala memoria.
    -¿Pero te acuerdas de algo? ¿Puedes recitarme algo para que me haga una idea?
    -No, sólo recuerdo sensaciones.
    -¿Qué tipo de sensaciones? Dime una.
    -La desesperación...
    -¿Ya está? ¿Eso es todo?
    -La desesperación, la altura, el mar, cosas no cerradas, abiertas de par en par, como si el pecho te explotara.

  • MJ Nicholls

    An early unpublished MS from the bottomless archives, posthumously super-packaged in a slipcase, pretty well-regarded on Goodreads, for me, increasingly directionless, uninteresting and unforgivably flat on the prose level. Read up to p.137.

  • Luís

    In the beginning, the story of the book seems so simple that one can only wonder what the turning point will be. Udo, a 25-year-old German, goes on holiday to Spain where he used to go with his parents several years ago. Udo, accompanied by his fiancee Ingeborg, is at a turning point in his life, he intends to devote himself entirely to his passion, the wargames. Many characters come to disturb the first days in the sun of the couple, including the boat rental that seems to live on the beach and will prove a formidable opponent on the plateau for Udo. Little by little, the relations between them will become more complex, and the hero will be very lonely.
    Whether it's the Spaniards, Udo's opponent, the burnt man, the bosses of the hotel or the annoying another German couple on vacation, all the people who intervene in the life of the couple do it professionally. I imagined them talking while making significant gestures all the time. Each plays his role and not deviate so that the atmosphere of this city takes on an unreal lustre. Roberto Bolaño juggles between reality and fantasy. The town seems to be only the scenery of the trap that closes on Udo. His relations with Germany, which are limited to brief telephone conversations with his best friend Conrad, tend to look artificial too. The straightforward holiday narrative goes from tanning chronicles to a man's fear for his life.
    If the moist and agonizing atmosphere settles progressively well, the end is still disappointing. Too many tracks mentioned explaining the events, to finally not dig any. The title's choice of the novel that takes the name of the game disputed into the hero and the burnt suggests the legacy of the second world war is at the heart of the book. Some reflections on the nationality of Udo abound in this sense. We imagine a link with the personal story of his opponent, but I must miss the keys to really understand the scope of the theme and thus collect the pieces of the puzzle.

  • Diogenis Papadopoulos

    Το συγκεκριμένο μυθιστόρημα το διάβασα περισσότερο για να γνωρίσω τον R. Bolano, συγγραφέα του 2666 (μιας και έχω ακούσει και διαβάσει τόσα για το 2666). Αλλά απογοητεύτηκα...
    Στα συν είναι η γραφή του.
    Αλλά από 'κει και πέρα η ιστορία μπάζει από παντού. Φυσικά, αυτό μπορεί να οφείλεται και στο γεγονός ότι το βιβλίο εκδόθηκε μετά το θάνατο του συγγραφέα. Όπως και να 'χει πάντως, αν και ξεκινάει με καλές προοπτικές και προσπαθεί να σε βάλει σε ένα σκοτεινό και απειλητικό περιβάλλον, μετά από κάποιο σημείο... από την πόλη έρχομαι και στην κορφή κανέλα.

  • Biogeek

    Ugh!
    My initial review was just those three letters. But maybe I need to add more. This book is a perfect addition to the shelf of any reader who needs to convince others that their reading tastes are higher brow than most. Like Murakami and so many others on that same shelf, I wonder if the stilted writing and slow pacing is the result of poor translation. Pages and pages where nothing happens, and where the protagonist seems to be stuck in a slow-motion time warp, make for dull reading. Ever wonder how Kafka and Beckett's love child would write. Read any of the pages of The Third Reich. "In the afternoon I visited the manager of the Costa Brava, Mr. Pere, and assured him that he could find me at the Del Mar if he needed me for anything. We exchanged pleasantries and I left. Then I was at Navy Headquarters, where no one could give me any information about Charly. The woman I saw first didn't even know what I was talking about. Luckily there was an official there who was familiar with the case and everything was cleared up. No news." No news? There is no news in 300 pages! The symbolism of the war games is slightly interesting, but otherwise, this is not the book to read if trying to find out what the Bolano hype is all about.

  • Giuseppe Sirugo

    El Tercer Reich fue publicado desde la editorial española Anagama y forma parte de la colección «Narrativas hispánicas». La novela es la undécima, Es póstuma a la muerte del escritor Roberto Bolaño, fallecido a los 50 años en medio de lo que debería ser su vida creativa.
    Roberto no era nuevo con el acentuar un abuso de lectura y el título del libro, aludiendo al tercer imperio de Alemania, habría querido hacer referencia a lo que se ha conocido de una Alemania nazi (esto para el mismo escritor); fue algo secundario, pero ha sido un tema que el escritor chileno tenía un amplio conocimiento histórico. En su propia bibliografía quiso retomar el concepto de nazismo en varias ocasiones: en los años que estuvo vivo escribió novelas afines como "La literatura nazi en América", u tal vez el mismo concepto de nazismo quiso entenderlo con la novela "Estrella distante".

    Inicialmente el libro se escribió a mano y en varios cuadernos alrededor de 1989. Luego con 362 hojas se reescribió a máquina y se corrigió nuevamente a mano en varios puntos. Hasta que en 1995 Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) compró su primera computadora y ha mecanografiado unas sesenta páginas: cosa que hizo pensar que la novela probablemente había decidido publicarla.
    La elaboración de este libro tiene lugar principalmente en el hotel Del Mar. Un pueblo turístico de la Costa Brava. Y se basa fundamentalmente en juegos de guerra, videojuegos, algo que el mismo escritor quedó bastante fascinado. El escritor estaba interesado en el conocer. Tanto es que en el último período a pesar de estar enfermo y destinado a morir en el interior del hospital donde decidió ser internado logró mantener una ironía acre, un cierto interés por largos debates, como largas conversaciones con amigos y conocidos. El contenido está escrito en primera persona y se puede entender que Roberto quiso extenderlo por escrito como una agenda personal durante un período que fluctuó del 20 de agosto al 30 de septiembre. No especificó el año. Pero según el escritor el libro se terminó con ocho textos que fueron escritos con el estilo de una prosa poética.

  • Chris

    Not my cup of tea, that's for sure!! I do struggle with a lot of what ends up in the literary fiction genre. Maybe I'm just normally not into reading for deep thinking wit a few exceptions. I felt that this novel was filled with nothing. No action or character development. I didn't like nor identify with any of the characters and could care less what happened to them. The only character that intrigued me was the brooding disfigured El Quemado who was much more than the adjectives I gave him.

    I suppose that the war game ( the MC & narrator was a gamer) could symbolize the games we play in real life ..... Overall I was bored slogging through the oppressive storyline. Now I am definitely in the minority as many GR reviews gave 4 & 5 stars for this novel.

  • Hakan

    Geçen ayki bir seyahatimde girdiğim bir sahafta Bolano’nun daha önce ismini hiç duymadığım bu romanına rastlayınca hemen almıştım. Aslında Bolano’nun ilk romanlarındanmış; 1989’da yazmış, 2003’deki ölümünden sonra geride bıraktıkları arasında keşfedilmiş, İspanyolca özgün metni 2010’da, benim okuduğum İngilizce tercümesi ise 2011’de basılmış. Türkçe’ye de herhalde çevirilir ve basılır yakında diye umalım.

    Kitabın ismi zaten baştan şaşırtıyor insanı, Nazi İmparatorluğu hakkında diye mi sorgulatıyor. Aslında İspanya’da Costa Brava kıyılarında tatil yapan bir Alman genci Udo Berger’in hikayesi. Berger sıradan bir işi olan biri, ama aynı zamanda Almanya’nın masa/kutu oyunu (board game) şampiyonu. Üçüncü Reich da üzerinde çalıştığı son oyunlardan, tatilde de yanında getirmiş. Oyuna olan saplantısı, epey çekici olan kız arkadaşını, denizi, kumu, orada tanıştıkları tuhaf bir genç Alman çiftini ihmal etmesine yol açıyor. Bu arada karanlık İspanyol tiplere takılıyorlar, gerilimli anlar yaşıyorlar. Udo özellikle kumsalda çalışan yanık yüzlü esrarengiz bir tiple oyun arkadaşı oluyor. Otel sahibinin Alman karısına Berger’in tutkusu da kitabın ana temalarından.

    Kitabın ilginç, giderek karanlık tonlar içeren bir atmosferi var. Günlük şeklinde yazılmış, yani Berger’in günlüklerini okuyoruz. Belki en güçlü eserlerinden değil, sonu özellikle pek toparlanamamış gibi. Ama Bolano ne yazsa okunur, bu kitap da kendini keyifle okutuyor. Yalnız Arturo Belano henüz piyasaya sürülmemiş, meraklıların dikkatine :)

  • Natalie

    I basically love and drool over every tiny scrap of Bolano's writing that we've been thrown since his death, but this one just didn't have the same effortless beauty that all of his previous writing contains. It's not Bolano's fault; The Third Reich is a previously unpublished book purportedly written in 1989 and found among his papers after his death, and one gets the impression he wasn't quite finished polishing it or else wasn't ready for it to see print. The climax was, well, anticlimactic. The chapters detailing the war games with which the protagonist is fascinated were dull and uninteresting. The symbolism was obvious and heavy-handed. I expect more from Bolano and all of his other books provide it. This is not a great place to start for a person who is new to his work.

  • Harry

    Existentialism and Shifting Reality on Vacation

    I have read some interesting reviews about this book. Sadly they all seem disappointed with it. I on the other hand found it quite thrilling.
    At first I must admit that Roberto Bolano was a new name to me, but fresh eyes can usually see things that others cannot. While I think that other readers approached "Third Reich" as a Holy Grail, a lost unpublished manuscript only to find it unpolished I was optimistic.
    A German war games champion Udo Berger on vacation in the last days of summer with his girlfriend Ingeborg, meet a rowdy Charly and his girlfriend Hanna, and the mysterious El Quemado. When Charly disappears while windsurfing the others leave while Udo stays on to face El Quemado in a match of The Rise and Decline of the Third Reich. Having no prior bias towards Bolano's work I was intrigued to say the least.

    As I have said I am not familiar with Bolano's work but I am a fan of other elements of his book. First I am a philosopher so reading someone's review heading "Existentialism" immediately got my attention. Second I am a war games player. I think while this book may have let down the general Bolano audience it was very much tailored to my own interests.

    Now, only reading a few pages in I was immediately struck with a sense of familiarity, which I compared to two other works of fiction that I felt were in the same vein: "Senselessness" written by Horacio Castellanos Moya and "The Outsider" by Albert Camus. I will be brief in my comparison as I want to talk mainly about "Third Reich". The feeling of desolation, foreboding and violence comes from Moya who's own character stumbles around town trying to write an article about indigenous people who's families were slaughtered. Whereas Camus' Meursault is charged with not "feeling" they way a normal person should, which to me is exactly how Udo appears to those around him. Interestingly it is the owner of the Del Mar, Frau Else, tells him,
    "When you die, Udo, you'll be able to say, 'I'm returning to where I came from: nothingness"
    Being and Nothingness...It's something to muse on if you choose to read "Third Reich" again.

    I read somewhere else that "Third Reich" was going to be like Bolano's other novel, "2666" in that it had pages and pages of military manoeuvres and this lead to dull, meaninglessness. Oddly I found it quite enjoyable. I wish there had been a little more. As a player of war games I am always intrigued to step into the shoes of generals long past and try to find that perfect formula for victory. I was in rapt suspense during the match with El Quemado, not only because of how it went but also the the building dread, and through it all Udo's sense of indifference, as though he understood it all but at the same time did not.

    I felt the characters were real, the settings were real, but as mentioned elsewhere Bolano keeps them at arms length. I would argue that has to do with the choice of literary technique, Udo's diary and since Udo cannot tell what other people are thinking the sense of distance from the characters is realistic. Something else I should note is the use of dreams. On occasion an author includes one or two in a work unless they are crucial to advancing the plot, here however Bolano uses them to blur reality, at times I wasn't sure what I was reading was reality or a dream.

    I will agree that this book is not for everyone, possibly only for dedicated fans of Bolano. I enjoyed it and got a lot out of it. So much so I want to break out my war games again. But I can imagine if you are reading along and decide that nothing is happening and you haven't found the gloomy smoke filled mood of the book then it isn't for you. I just wanted to give "Third Reich" a positive review from fresh eyes, I think I have done so.

  • Supreeth

    The Third Reich stays in sync with 2666's theme of this never ending sinister sense of foreboding. There's never enough room for anything to happen, but clock keeps ticking, and that is all there is, a constant ticking, tick-tick-tick, Chekov's gun left unfired.

  • Simon Hollway

    Just like the scene Bolano flawlessly describes, the first two thirds of the novel shoot past - The Third Reich is a holiday poolside page-turner sketching a summer holiday hook-up between two disparate couples. Ironically, once the holiday season it dazzlingly dramatises comes to an end, so the book itself starts to peter out. It all goes a bit topsy-turvy, tense and nervy....I couldn't put this book down right up until Charley's demise. Then it began to drag: the dream sequences became clunky and repetitive and the war game itself never really came to life. The ever-elusive allegory just didn't seem compelling enough to reflect upon - Nazis, vague threats of death, something to do with El Quemado possibly being South American possibly and possibly, possibly being tortured/burnt over there by ex-Nazis from the Rat Line possibly or some such floating possible inference and a revenge type tip with a dollop of vague rapey menace thrown in....mmmm. Definitely a 3.5 star novel which zipped along for the most part. Lost its way for me...I almost feel that it wasn't in fact finished, that Bolano had possibly been searching for a killer third act but never found the inspiration. Not sure. 'Savage Detectives' is my favourite novel of the decade so far so I am a dedicated fanboy but possibly just a bit too 'vanilla' a reader for the final section to really hit home. I probably need remedial help to join up all the dots.

  • Kelly

    This was my third Bolaño novel, (the first two being "2666" and "The Savage Detectives"). Familiarity with where he would eventually end up as a novelist makes reading "The Third Reich" an eerily fun experience. It also illuminates the central themes of his later works. "The Third Reich" is the name of a strategic board game that mirrors the battle chronology of World War II, and Bolaño has made the champion player a young German on vacation in Spain. It's worth noting that Bolaño had a special interest in the ineffable qualities of evil that seem to pass through time and space in a steady, yet unknowable, way. The real-world migration of Nazi war criminals to South America seems connected in an almost spiritual way to Bolaño's fictional portrays of German war veterans and Nazi mystique.

    "The Third Reich" is a surprisingly good novel, even though it often feels like it was written a century ago. I know that doesn't make sense, but I kept thinking about Thomas Mann while I was reading this. Some plot points and characters don't appear to make sense, but they somehow fit. It's a gloomy, old-world novel that keeps reminding you that it is actually rather contemporary.

  • Dr Zorlak

    Trescientas y pico de páginas de narrativa inane acerca de un huevón que juega wargames, su novia y dos panas que encuentra en un resort de la costa catalana. Cómo alguien habría podido ponerse a escribir tan largamente esta novela sin destino es algo que no me cabe en la cabeza. Una de esas ideas que se le ocurren a los escritores, pero que solo el escritor mismo entiende. Lo único que saqué de este pantano de huevadas fue la curiosidad por esos benditos juegos de guerra. Peladores el Quemado, Frau Else, el Lobo, el Cordero, Hannah y Charly. Él único personaje que valía la pena era el marido de Frau Else (enfermo y recluso de su habitación) y el sereno nocturno. Esta novela se mueve con el mismo esnobismo y pretensión de una película intelectual francesa, pletórica de personajes engreídos e insostenibles. La peor obra de Bolaños... bueno, no. Monsieur Pain y Nocturno de Chile siguen en la delantera. Digamos que este es su tercer libro no bueno. Libros malos de maestros narradores son especialmente pedagógicos.

  • Christine

    I was a gamer once. I played Dungeons and Dragons. And then graduate school happened and all I had time for was Magic the Gathering. I can understand the appeal of gaming, even historical war game, which I never played. Yet the appeal of playing a game about WW II and seeing if Germany can win seems rather well strange.

    I think Bolano felt the same way because in this book he examines how some people lose the connection to reality when they play games. It is no surprise that his central character, Udo, is German. A young German consumed by War games, but this novel seems about more of the struggle to grow and change.

    Yet compared to 2666 there is a sense of the reader being kept at an arm's distance in this book, as if the characters and the story itself are wary of revealing too much to the reader. It makes for certainly strange reading.

  • Lee Foust

    Despite the fact that The Third Reich was an unfinished or at least unpublished MS of Bolano's, posthumously published and translated into English more for completeists than general readers, I'm going full five stars and favorite shelf for this bad boy. Ironically, I think I've been grousing a bit in recent reviews about novels I've found mediocre because they seemed to have no unifying theme or message, that their characters and narrative were their only reasons for existing and that such novels just aren't my cup of tea... Then along comes Bolano with this utterly mysterious but wonderfully bizarre narrative of a German couple's vacation on the Spanish coast dragging on and on into something both utterly strange and totally boring AT THE SAME TIME that I find completely riveting even if I have really no idea why. Go figure.

    The closest I seem to be able to come right at this minute to explaining how compelling this novel about nothing (and perhaps everything) is, is to compare it to one of Kafka's novels. Like them, as Deleuze and Guattari so well explicate it in their Anti-Oedipus and Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature books, the novel becomes a kind of narrative machine. It's just not like other plotted novels and its unfamiliarity with novelistic conventions and the comfort that such conventions give complacent readers keeps one on the edge of one's seat--but for none of the reasons that novels usually get us to do that. Here it's because we're mystified and curious, unnerved really, because that narrative machine might just spit out anything tomorrow and it's fascinating. The oddest thing about such books is that they end--and even that is surprising.

    Of Bolano's secondary, posthumous works I loved both this one and also the Little Lumpen Novelito. Both are unexpected minor masterpieces in my opinion.

  • Matthew

    I admittedly and without shame, despite the obvious implications, have developed a fetish for every scrap of Bolaño's writing that materializes before me. I didn't even like his poetry at first (I prefer poetry, especially poetry of Bolaño’s trajectory, to any form of prose), but I have started to like his poetry as well. I can't fairly lay The Third Reich against The Savage Detectives or 2666, or even The Skating Rink or anything else. The manuscript was found among his papers after his death, and presumably he would not have liked for this book to appear in the world. I do not know the literary history of the manuscript nor do I care to "chart the evolution" of the writer, or of any writer. Charts are for stars and evolution is for warfare. I like this book, an easy read, the easiest of Bolaño's. It's an experiment in disguise for most of the book, a Bolaño mystery minus the literati, a diversion into the labyrinth of memory minus the alternating narrators. It's a fairly conventional crack up story, not entirely unlike Böll's The Clown (which Bolano's German literature hound narrator more or less references), But of course this is a Bolano novel, and it unfolds differently than the patient opening three-quarters suggest. He can always turn the words to screw up my vision and lead me to a raw apprehension of the world, its lights and its formations more certain in their newly blurred manifestations. If you haven't read any Bolaño or don't like him yet, look elsewhere before trying this novel. But this one puts an angle on his other books.

  • Frank Privette

    Sabemos que una novela de Roberto Bolaño con un título así será, al menos, oscura. Pero perversa y muy efectivamente el autor empieza haciéndonos sentir que estamos en medio de “Hawaii-Bombay” de Mecano. Al final, sin realmente percatarnos cuándo cambió todo, estamos en medio de algo parecido a “The God That Failed” de Metallica.

    El argumento (tanto el aparente como algunos, digamos, intertextuales), los temas, el simbolismo son en gran parte los esperados. Pero no por eso dejan de ser efectivos, interesantes, frescos, lapidarios: la maldad encarnada del nazismo, el efecto de la guerra (la bélica, la económica, la colonial) en los marginales, la banalidad de la vida cotidiana (aunque de vacaciones) del primer mundo, el contraste entre lo español y lo alemán, la violencia, el entretenimiento, y la realidad y lo lúdico desdibujados.

    La frase que quedó conmigo, presentada sin ningún contexto ni explicación: “¿Y desde cuándo has dejado los poemas, Quemado? ¿Desde que empezamos el Tercer Reich?”