In what would prove to be his last interview, Bolaño named for Monica Maristain the books that had marked his life. Alongside works in Spanish, English, French, and Latin, he also named Franz Kafka’s novels, the Aphorisms of Lichtenberg, and the Tractatus by Wittgenstein. This troika can be supplemented with Russian authors mentioned repeatedly in works and essays, for example Anton Chekhov and Fyodor Dostoevsky. This chapter enumerates and analyzes Roberto Bolaño’s deep and persistent engagement with German and Russian literatures, and tries to make sense of a fundamental difference in the two repertoires: most of the Russian authors mentioned or alluded to in Bolaño’s work are recognized names in world literature read and appreciated by non-specialists, whereas his chosen German authors range from immortals such as J. W. von Goethe to long-forgotten names like Heinrich Lersch and Max Barthel. It is no surprise that these two literary traditions join in dialectical fashion in Bolaño’s magnum opus, 2666, where a German, Hans Reiter, derives literary inspiration from the diary of a Russian Jew, Boris Abramovich Ansky. The two literatures struggle with each other as do the two armies to cognitively map the evils of the 20th century.

The two main drivers of women’s novels between 1800 and 1830 were the love-intrigue and a keen interest in politics. The market played a part: readers craved love-stories but, as avid followers of the national upheavals of the period, they were not solely seeking escapism. Thus, for example, egalitarian perspectives often shape the plots of these women’s novels. Among those who performed a (sometimes precarious) balancing-act between ‘romance’ and ‘social critique’ were Stéphanie de Genlis, Adélaïde de Souza, Julie de Krüdener, Sophie Cottin, Sophie Gay and Claire de Duras. The linchpin was the celebrity Germaine de Staël, who set the agenda not only for contemporary novelists but also for many later ones, both male and female. With characters like the creative Corinne, as well as through feminist analyses and comparative literary criticism, she influenced writers throughout Europe and in the United States. For Staël, romance, Romanticism, history and social critique were interwoven. Her contribution to Western culture is increasingly highlighted by literary scholars and intellectual historians, and in 2017 France bestowed on her a significant accolade: publication in the prestigious Pléiade series.