The Savage Detectives is an 1998 novel, Chilean author Roberto Bolano's epic on the life of storytellers. It is a Doorstopper novel made almost exclusively on Alternate Character Interpretation, Offscreen Moment of Awesome, Big Lipped Alligator Moment and ,oddly enough, Reality Ensues. Much Better Than It Sounds. Maybe. The book is divided on three parts. All three sections are somewhat stand-alone, but only as a whole the point of the book can be understood. The events take place in the period 1976-1996. This work contains examples of: