Carmen Boullosa writes in The Nation about Roberto Bolaño, his novels translated into English, Mexico City in the seventies:
Years later, like the rest of us, Bolaño had to respond to the question: Are you for or against "magic realism"? It bounced back to us from younger generations who hadn't known the privileged, navel-gazing literary world we had enjoyed in the early '70s. With the political and economic tragedies of the region, the literary circles broke and scattered, the publishing houses collapsed and Mexico City stopped being Latin America's sounding board. The youngest took their cues from the gringos--they judged the panorama of Latin American writing by which books had become hits in English translation.
Read it all here.
