By Night in Chile

Told in a delirious monologue, By Night in Chile is the final testimony of Sebastián Urrutia Lacroix—Chilean priest and member of Opus Dei, eminent literary critic and failed poet—as he is haunted by a shadowy figure known as the wizened youth. In Urrutia’s feverish last hours, a deluge of memories pours from he hobnobs with Santiago’s literary elite; he embarks on a tour of European cathedrals under existential threat by pigeon excrement at the behest of two foreign agents called Etah and Raef; he retreats into ancient Greek poetry during the darkest chapter in Chilean history; he undertakes the tutelage of Augusto Pinochet in Marxist theory, so that the General may better understand his enemies—throughout insisting, with fracturing conviction, that he was always on the right side of history. A novel about art and aestheticism, silence and complicity, and, ultimately, the weight of damnation, By Night in Chile is a deep-cutting satire and a work of devastating moral clarity.