Roberto Bolano was born in Santiago, Chile, in 1953. Arrested and briefly jailed by the Pinochet regime in 1973, he went on to spend nomadic years in El Salvador, Mexico, France, and finally Spain. His novel The Savage Detectives received the Herralde Prize and the Romulo Gallegos Prize, affording him international recognition as the leading Latin American author of his generation and one of the most important and original literary voices of the late 20th century. He died in Blanes, Spain, at the age of 50.