In orbit: Roberto Bolaño and world literature

Sammanfattning: Chilean author Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) has achieved considerable critical and commercial success among a global English readership. Breaking into the US market, which has an important mediating role for the international circulation of texts, is a rare feat for a non-Anglophone author and requires some explanation. In the spirit of Pascale Casanova’s international criticism, this paper looks at Bolaño’s work as world literature and his persona as a world-literature figure against which theories on the subject can be measured. Furthermore, I will partly use his posthumous novel, 2666, as an example of a work that arises out of this process of becoming-world-literature. The success of Bolaño more or less conforms to the main theories of world literature (Casanova, Moretti, Thomsen), but it also reveals interesting mismatches and problematic aspects that show a need to update existing theories.