Perhaps surprisingly to some of his fiction fans, Roberto Bolaño touted poetry as the superior art form. When asked, 'What makes you believe you're a better poet than a novelist?' Bolaño replied, 'The poetry makes me blush less'.

In 1993, fearing for his health, Bolaño began collecting the poetry he had written since his arrival in Spain in 1977. This bilingual edition of The Unknown University represents the author's definitive work in his preferred medium.

With poems written in prose, stories in verse, and flashes of writing that can hardly be categorized, The Unknown University is a showcase of Bolaño's gift for freely crossing genres. It confirms once again the undeniable genius of this giant of Latin American literature.