Translated by Natasha Wimmer
Winner of the 2008 National Book Critics’ Circle Award for Fiction
Composed in the last years of Roberto Bolaño’s life, 2666 was greeted across Europe and Latin America as his most brilliant achievement, surpassing even his previous work in its strangeness, beauty, and scope. The epic's subject matter ranges from the heady heights of literature and love to the gritty realism of violence and death. Its throng of unforgettable characters includes an enigmatic Prussian novelist who vanishes from the public eye; a group of literary critics who share a passion for the novelist’s works; an African-American journalist sent to Mexico on a sports beat after his mother’s death; and a Chilean professor whose mind is slowly losing its grip on reality. Their lives intersect in the urban sprawl of Santa Teresa, a fictional Juárez on the U.S.-Mexico border, where the serial killings of hundreds of young working class women remain unsolved.
