2666: A Novel

Roberto Bolaño

Jul 2013 · Sold by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

About this ebook

A NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER

THE POSTHUMOUS MASTERWORK FROM "ONE OF THE GREATEST AND MOST INFLUENTIAL MODERN WRITERS" (JAMES WOOD, THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW)

Composed in the last years of Roberto Bolaño's life, 2666 was greeted across Europe and Latin America as his highest achievement, surpassing even his previous work in its strangeness, beauty, and scope. Its throng of unforgettable characters includes academics and convicts, an American sportswriter, an elusive German novelist, and a teenage student and her widowed, mentally unstable father. Their lives intersect in the urban sprawl of SantaTeresa—a fictional Juárez—on the U.S.-Mexico border, where hundreds of young factory workers, in the novel as in life, have disappeared.

Ratings and reviews

This book reminds me of a trip to the forest to see a beautiful orchid (locally that would be a ladyslipper), and after looking and seeing many wonderful plants, no ladyslipper. There is some wonderful writing and some connections over this very long novel, I felt there should have been more of a resolution after the commitment it takes to read a book of this length.

This is one of the greatest pieces of literature of all time. I know many people prefer Savage Detectives (a book that deserves equal praise) but I personally enjoyed 2666 a little more. Having struggled with a learning disability I am often intimidated by long books. From the moment I picked it up I couldn't put it down. As I read it I felt like I was at the bedside of a dying relative.

About the author

ROBERTO BOLAÑO was born in Santiago, Chile, in 1953. He grew up in Chile and Mexico City, where he was a founder of the infrarealist poetry movement. His first full-length novel, The Savage Detectives, received the Herralde Prize and the Romulo Gallegos Prize when it appeared in 1998. Bolaño died in Blanes, Spain, at the age of fifty.

NATASHA WIMMER 's translation of The Savage Detectives was chosen as one of the ten best books of 2007 by The Washington Post and The New York Times.