Last Evenings on Earth by Roberto BolanoNaturalistic and slightly surreal stories of Latin America and Spain. Very often, the narrator ("B" or "Arturo Belano") stands in for Bolano himself, and stories revolve around writers and books. It's incredible how many craft rules are broken here (telling instead of showing, ending right before the climax, denoting characters by letters rather than names), and somehow the stories are pulled off brilliantly. My favorite was the closer, "Dance Card," a postmodern life story of pain, revolution, and poetry.