--- product_id: 14668258 title: "Woes of the True Policeman" price: "R608" currency: ZAR in_stock: true reviews_count: 8 url: https://www.desertcart.co.za/products/14668258-woes-of-the-true-policeman store_origin: ZA region: South Africa --- # Woes of the True Policeman **Price:** R608 **Availability:** ✅ In Stock ## Quick Answers - **What is this?** Woes of the True Policeman - **How much does it cost?** R608 with free shipping - **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship - **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.co.za](https://www.desertcart.co.za/products/14668258-woes-of-the-true-policeman) ## Best For - Customers looking for quality international products ## Why This Product - Free international shipping included - Worldwide delivery with tracking - 15-day hassle-free returns ## Description Author of The Savage Detectives and 2666 Crushed by a devastating scandal, university professor Óscar Amalfitano flees Barcelona for Santa Teresa―a Mexican city close to the U.S. border, where women are being killed in staggering numbers. There, Amalfitano begins an affair with Castillo, a young forger of Larry Rivers paintings, while his daughter, Rosa, reeling from the weight of his secrets, seeks solace in a romance of her own. Yet when she finds her father in bed with Castillo, Rosa is confronted with the full force of her crisis. What follows is an intimate police investigation of Amalfitano, leading to a finale of euphoria and heartbreak. Featuring characters and stories from The Savage Detectives and 2666 , Roberto Bolaño's Woes of the True Policeman mines the depths of art, memory, and desire―and marks the culmination of one of the great careers of world literature. Review: The perfect shipment! - The item was in better condition than the description. It showed up early. Thank you! Review: Not Bolano's Best, But Worth Reading - I enjoyed this a great deal. It's not his best, but certainly better than Third Reich. Interesting as an addendum to 2666, though not essential. Some people have called it the sixth book of that great novel, but it's really not. Still worth it, though. A great expansion on the Amalfitano character. The only real knock is that it ends rather suddenly, as posthumously published works often do, and left me with a sense of the story being not quite complete and I really felt like it deserved a better sense of closure. ## Technical Specifications | Specification | Value | |---------------|-------| | Best Sellers Rank | #1,285,617 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #30,798 in Literary Fiction (Books) #45,684 in American Literature (Books) | | Customer Reviews | 4.1 out of 5 stars 44 Reviews | ## Images ![Woes of the True Policeman - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81GyMcVny1L.jpg) ## Customer Reviews ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The perfect shipment! *by J***E on August 18, 2021* The item was in better condition than the description. It showed up early. Thank you! ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Not Bolano's Best, But Worth Reading *by G***N on February 18, 2013* I enjoyed this a great deal. It's not his best, but certainly better than Third Reich. Interesting as an addendum to 2666, though not essential. Some people have called it the sixth book of that great novel, but it's really not. Still worth it, though. A great expansion on the Amalfitano character. The only real knock is that it ends rather suddenly, as posthumously published works often do, and left me with a sense of the story being not quite complete and I really felt like it deserved a better sense of closure. ### ⭐⭐⭐ Waste Not, Want Not *by A***R on February 20, 2013* This volume, which Bolaño is said to have worked on from the 1980s until his death in 2003, is most likely to appeal to hard-core Bolañistas and novelists like myself, though it is full of interesting bits. It seems to be a side project to his masterly 2666, also left in a state of incompletion (though you wouldn’t know this unless you were told) at his death, and involves some of the same characters that appear in that novel, Amalfito and Rosa in particular. However, the versions of these characters as portrayed in Woes of the True Policeman do not really gibe with the their counterparts in 2666, and, and though Bolaño does occasionally refer to the former book by its title in his correspondence, there is ample reason to suppose that Woes is to some degree a sketch book for 2666, which he was working on at the same time. In that case many of the sketches in Woes may be seen as warm-ups for 2666, experiments finally omitted from that much more polished masterpiece. Since Bolaño frequently reused characters (slightly altered) from book to book, and never wasted a word he wrote, I’m tempted to think that when he finally had 2666 pretty much where he wanted it, he wondered if he could make another novel out of the leftovers that we now have as Woes. (And you can be certain his publishers wondered the same thing after his death.) Thus for anyone who writes and is interested in how Bolaño went about it, Woes is fascinating, even essential. It is very far from being a finished novel, however, even though there is new material included in it, particularly regarding policemen (consonant with the author’s abiding interest in detectives). For me Woes is a very instructive look into Bolaño’s writing process (“just do it,” in short), and for that I loved it. --- ## Why Shop on Desertcart? - 🛒 **Trusted by 1.3+ Million Shoppers** — Serving international shoppers since 2016 - 🌍 **Shop Globally** — Access 737+ million products across 21 categories - 💰 **No Hidden Fees** — All customs, duties, and taxes included in the price - 🔄 **15-Day Free Returns** — Hassle-free returns (30 days for PRO members) - 🔒 **Secure Payments** — Trusted payment options with buyer protection - ⭐ **TrustPilot Rated 4.5/5** — Based on 8,000+ happy customer reviews **Shop now:** [https://www.desertcart.co.za/products/14668258-woes-of-the-true-policeman](https://www.desertcart.co.za/products/14668258-woes-of-the-true-policeman) --- *Product available on Desertcart South Africa* *Store origin: ZA* *Last updated: 2026-06-23*