2666

Description

The epic novel that defined one of Latin America's greatest writers and his unique vision of the 20th century.Santa Teresa, on the Mexico-US border, is an urban sprawl that draws in lost souls. Among them are three academics on the trail of a reclusive German author; a New York reporter on his first Mexican assignment; a widowed philosopher; and a police detective in love with an elusive older woman.But there is darker side still to the town. It is an emblem of corruption, violence and decadence, and one from which, over the course of a decade, hundreds of women have mysteriously, often brutally, disappeared...Conceived on an astonishing scale, and - in the last years of Roberto Bolano's life - with burning, visionary commitment, 2666 has been greeted around the world as his masterpiece, surpassing even his previous work in inventiveness, imagination, beauty and scope.

Roberto Bolano was born in Santiago, Chile, in 1953. He grew up in Chile and Mexico City. His first full-length novel, The Savage Detectives (Picador 2007), received the Heralde Prize and the Romulo Gallegos Prize when it appeared in 1998. He died in Blanes, Spain, at the age of 50. 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.

Readers who have snacked on Haruki Murakami will feast on Roberto Bolano. * Sunday Times * Bolano makes you feel changed for having read him; he adjusts your angle of view on the world. * Guardian * The best book of 2008 . . . A masterpiece, the electrifying literary event of the year. * Time * One of those strange, exquisite, and astonishing experiences that literature offers us only once in a very long time. * El Pais * Bolano's masterwork. An often shockingly raunchy and violent tour de force (though the phrase seems hardly adequate to describe the novel's narrative velocity, polyphonic range, inventiveness, and bravery) * New York Review of Books * Not just the great Spanish-language novel of this decade, but one of the cornerstones that define an entire literature. 2666 is a magisterial and inimitable. * La Vanguardia * Endlessly in love with people and books, Bolano's last novel ranges over the world and history. * Le Monde des Livres * A work of genius: the work of a master whose voice has all the authority and seeming effortlessness that we associate with the great classics of the ages. * Blanco y Negro *