HUNTSVILLE, Tex. – The late Chilean novelist Roberto Bolaño has been hailed as a literary hero by critics. The English translation of Bolaño's The Savage Detectives, published last year in the United States, was described by New York Times book critic Richard Eder as "complex, numbingly chaotic and sinuously memorable."
The Texas Department of Criminal Justice isn't so effusive. The organization has denied an inmate access to the book based upon guidelines found in the department's Offender Orientation Handbook.
The book contains a passage that describes an oral sex contest in which one of the contestants nearly chokes to death on the penis of a well-endowed recipient.
The inmate, identified only as No. 1385412, is incarcerated in Huntsville, Texas, and ordered the book. However prison overseers decided the material in Bolaño's novel—which describes heterosexual activity—could "encourage homosexual or deviant criminal sexual behavior."
The inmate hopes to appeal the decision.
