This collection includes 21 short stories written by Bolaño between 1998 and 2003. Seventeen of these are from the posthumously compiled short story collection *The Secret of Evil*, edited by his friends, and four are from *The Unbearable Gauchos*, a collection of short stories and essays he compiled during his lifetime but published shortly after his death. A lawyer determined to escape the city, a journalist increasingly fearful of writing crime reports, a writer who sees plagiarists as kindred spirits, Pepe the rat policeman—Bolaño's only non-human protagonist—and Bellano, an alter ego of the author himself, and his friend Lima, appear in several stories… Together, they constitute this stylistically diverse, tense, and suspenseful collection of short stories. Admittedly, some stories are clearly unfinished, but more often than not, the line between unfinished and unfinished works seems blurred, as stated at the beginning of *The Secret of Evil*: "This story is very simple, although it could have been very complex. And it is not finished, because stories like this never have endings."
收录波拉尼奥1998至2003年间创作的21部短篇小说，其中17篇来自他去世后由其好友整理编纂的短篇集《邪恶的秘密》，4篇来自他生前编定但出版于他去世后不久的短篇与随笔集《令人难以忍受的高乔人》。决心逃离城市的律师、因撰写罪案报道而越来越惶恐的记者、视抄袭者为知音的作家，还有波拉尼奥笔下唯一的非人类主人公耗子警察佩佩，以及在多个故事中现身的作者本人的化身贝拉诺和其好友利马……他们共同构成了这部风格多变、充满张力与悬念的短篇小说集。不可否认，有些故事明显并未写完，但更多的时候，未完成之作与无结局的完整作品之间的界线似乎并不分明，正如《邪恶的秘密》一篇开头所言：“这篇小说非常简单，尽管它原本可能非常复杂。而且，它并未完结，因为这类故事都没有结尾。”
收录波拉尼奥1998至2003年间创作的21部短篇小说，其中17篇来自他去世后由其好友整理编纂的短篇集《邪恶的秘密》，4篇来自他生前编定但出版于他去世后不久的短篇与随笔集《令人难以忍受的高乔人》。决心逃离城市的律师、因撰写罪案报道而越来越惶恐的记者、视抄袭者为知音的作家，还有波拉尼奥笔下唯一的非人类主人公耗子警察佩佩，以及在多个故事中现身的作者本人的化身贝拉诺和其好友利马……他们共同构成了这部风格多变、充满张力与悬念的短篇小说集。不可否认，有些故事明显并未写完，但更多的时候，未完成之作与无结局的完整作品之间的界线似乎并不分明，正如《邪恶的秘密》一篇开头所言：“这篇小说非常简单，尽管它原本可能非常复杂。而且，它并未完结，因为这类故事都没有结尾。”
