The Skating Rink

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Brought to you by Penguin.

Dropped from the Olympic figure skating team, Nuria Martí’s fate pivots her into a world of corruption, jealousy – and revenge.

Cushioning her fall from grace, a besotted admirer builds a secret ice rink for her in the ruins of an old masion on the outskirts of their seaside town. What he doesn’t tell her is he paid for it using public funds. Such deceit is not without repercussions, and the skating rink soon becomes a crime scene.

Narrated by a corrupt and pompous civil servant, a beleaguered romantic poet, and a duplicitous civil servant, The Skating Rink is a darkly atmospheric tale of murder and its motives.

TRANSLATED BY CHRIS ANDREWS

'A work of intense and unrealized longing' The New York Times

‘Bolaño makes you feel changed for having read him; he adjusts your angle of view on the world’ Guardian

© Roberto Bolaño 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025

Critics Review

The Skating Rink…like much of what [Bolano] wrote, leaves many new novels looking pretty bland.
The Observer
This Catalan drama sizzles with unrequited love and murderous ambition.
The Independent
[A] short, exquisite novel
The New York Times Book Review
A sizzling cocktail of sex, death and obsession set on the Costa Brava.
The Times
Elegant, elusive and amusing
Daily Telegraph
Roberto Bolaño’s work is a sprawling labyrinth of surprise, bold invention, and images that will live with you forever.
Roberto Bolaño was a game changer: his field was politics, poetry and melancholia . . . and his writing was always unparalleled
Roberto Bolaño offers a unique, multilayered and quirky perspective on contemporary life.
Daily Mail
One of the most respected and influential writers of his generation... At once funny and vaguely, pervasively, frightening.
‘Latin American letters (wherever it may reside) has never had a greater, more disturbing avenging angel than Bolaño.

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