<p>In his final interview, Roberto Bola&ntilde;o says, 'I would like to have been a homicide detective, much more than a writer... I&#39;d have been someone who could come back to the scene of the crime, alone by night...'</p><p>This 'aloneness,' this perfect solitude, is very much at the core of The Defectors, a book of odd and uncanny episodes about people trying to 'defect' from reality. There is a secret policeman in 80s communist Prague who becomes obsessed with a fiercely independent female detective novelist. There is a Buddhist psychotherapist who travels around Amerika offering the 'talking cure' in a Volkswagen Beetle. There is an adjunct professor in Russian &eacute;migr&eacute; Brooklyn who quits his job to build a Golem made of stainless steel.</p><p>As the book progresses, the episodes become increasingly experimental. Ultimately, like particles in a supercollider, they get smashed together and fly apart. And we get a brief glimpse of something new, some never-before-seen particle, a cosmic thought. Orders ship January 10th</p>