"Extraordinarily beautiful . [Like] a dream from which we awake inspired to look more attentively at the world. " --Francine Prose, The New York Times Book Review A journey to Acapulco gradually becomes a descent into the underworld. An elderly South American writer instructs a protégé in the subterfuges of entering work for provincial literary prizes. A litany unfolds, offering sixty-nine reasons why not to dance with Pablo Neruda. "The melancholy folklore of exile," as Roberto Bolaño once put it, pervades the fourteen haunting stories of Last Evenings on Earth . Set in the Chilean exile diaspora of Latin America and Europe, and peopled by Bolano's beloved "failed generation," this collection was the first to introduce the English-speaking world to Bolaño's immeasurable gifts as a short-story writer.