Rife with political corruption, sex, jealousy and frustrated passion, "The Skating Rink" is a darkly atmospheric chronicle of one summer season in the seaside town of Z, on the Costa Brava, north of Barcelona. The story revolves around the beautiful figure skating champion Nuria Marti. When she is suddenly dropped from the Olympic team a besotted admirer builds a secret ice rink for her in the ruins of an old mansion on the outskirts of town. What he doesn't tell her is that he paid for it using embezzled public funds; but such a betrayal is only the beginning and the skating rink soon becomes a crime scene...Told in short suspenseful chapters by three alternating male narrators - a corrupt and pompous civil servant, a beleaguered, yet still romantic, itinerant poet, and a duplicitous local entrepreneur - "The Skating Rink" is a wholly engrossing tale of murder and its motives.

"Readers who have snacked on a writer such as Haruki Murakami will feast on Roberto Bolano". ("Sunday Times"). When Nuria Marti, the beautiful Spanish figure skater, is suddenly dropped from the Olympic team, a besotted admirer builds a secret ice rink for her in the ruins of an old mansion on the outskirts of their seaside town. What he doesn't tell her is that he paid for it using embezzled public funds. Such deceit is not without repercussions, and the skating rink soon becomes a crime scene ...Rife with political corruption, sex, jealousy and frustrated passion, "The Skating Rink" - narrated in turn by a corrupt and pompous civil servant, a beleaguered romantic poet, and a duplicitous local entrepreneur - is a darkly atmospheric tale of murder and its motives. "Bolano writes with such elegance, verve and style and is immensely readable". ("Guardian"). "His fiction was hallucinatory, haunting and experimental". ("Times Literary Supplement").