'Now I am a mother and a married woman, but not long ago I led a life of crime'

So begins Bianca's tale of growing up the hard way. Orphaned overnight as a teenager, she drops out of school and drifts into the bad company of two criminals her brother brings home. As the four of them plot a fantastical crime, Bianca learns she can drift even lower...

Electric and tense with foreboding, A Little Lumpen Novelita - one of the last novellas Roberto Bolano published - delivers a fractured fairy tale of taking control of one's fate.

TRANSLATED BY NATASHA WIMMER

'Bolano has proven that literature can do everything' The New York Times

'The man was a flat-out genius, one of the greatest writers of our time' Paul Auster