The Third Reich, Paperback

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice

On vacation with his girlfriend, Ingeborg, the German war-game champion Udo Berger returns to a small town on the Costa Brava where he spent his summers as a child. There, they meet another vacationing German couple, who introduce them to the darker side of the resort town's life. Soon Udo is enmeshed in a round of the Third Reich, his favorite World War II strategy game, with a shadowy local called El Quemado. As the game draws to its conclusion, Udo discovers that the outcome may be all too real.

Written in 1989, The Third Reich is Roberto Bola o's stunning exploration of memory and violence---and a rare glimpse at a world-class writer coming into his own.

Roberto Bola o was born in Santiago, Chile, in 1953. He grew up in Chile and Mexico City, where he was a founder of the Infrarealist poetry movement. He is the author of The Savage Detectives, which received the Herralde Prize and the R mulo Gallegos Prize, and 2666, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award. Bola o died in Blanes, Spain, at the age of fifty.

Natasha Wimmer has translated many works of fiction and nonfiction by Spanish language authors, including Mario Vargas Llosa, Laura Restrepo, and Rodrigo Fres n, as well as Roberto Bola o.