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2666

by Roberto Bolaño
2666

  • Comment on this title
  • Synopses & Reviews

ISBN13: 9780312429218
ISBN10: 0312429215



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Staff Pick

Completed in 2003 shortly before his death, 2666 is not only Roberto Bolaño's masterpiece but also one of the finest and most important novels of the 21st century. It's an entire world unto itself, one — not unlike our own — filled with horror, neglect, depravity, brilliance, and beauty. Epic in scope and epitomizing the "total novel," 2666 fuses many different genres and styles to create a singular and unforgettable work of contemporary fiction. While Bolaño's swan song marked the pinnacle of a sadly truncated literary career, his immense talent, creativity, and vision endure. Recommended By Jeremy G., Powells.com

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments

A NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER

New York Times Book Review 10 Best Books of 2008
Time Magazine's Best Book of 2008
Los Angeles Times Best Books of 2008
San Francisco Chronicle's 50 Best Fiction Books of 2008
Seattle Times Best Books of 2008
New York Magazine Top Ten Books of 2008

Three academics on the trail of a reclusive German author; a New York reporter on his first Mexican assignment; a widowed philosopher; a police detective in love with an elusive older woman — these are among the searchers drawn to the border city of Santa Teresa, where over the course of a decade hundreds of women have disappeared.

In the words of The Washington Post, "With 2666, Roberto Bolaño joins the ambitious overachievers of the twentieth-century novel, those like Proust, Musil, Joyce, Gaddis, Pynchon, Fuentes, and Vollmann, who push the novel far past its conventional size and scope to encompass an entire era, deploying encyclopedic knowledge and stylistic verve to offer a grand, if sometimes idiosyncratic, summation of their culture and the novelist's place in it. Bolaño has joined the immortals."

Review

With 2666, Bolano joins the ambitious overachievers of the 20th-century novel . . . who push the novel far past its conventional size and scope to encompass an entire era, deploying encyclopedic knowledge and stylistic verve to offer a grand . . . summation of their culture." The Washington Post

Review

"A masterpiece...the most electrifying literary event of the year." Lev Grossman, Time

Review

"Indeed, Bolaño produced not only a supreme capstone to his own vaulting ambition, but a landmark in what's possible for the novel as a form in our increasingly, and terrifyingly, postnational world." Jonathan Lethem, The New York Times Book Review

Review

"A work of devastating power and complexity, a final statement worthy of a master." Adam Mansbach, The Boston Globe

Review

"Bolaño's most audacious performance....It is bold in a way that few works really are it kicks away the divide between playfulness and seriousness." Henry Hitchings, Financial Times (UK)

Review

"The opening of 2666 had me in its thrall from those first few pages....For all the precision and poetry of its language, for all the complexity of its structure, for all the range of styles and genres it acknowledges and encompasses, for all its wicked humor, its inventiveness, and sophistication, 2666 seems like the work of a literary genius." Francine Prose, Harper's Magazine

Review

"Well, it's not dead yet. The modernist idea, which is really a Romantic idea, that the truest art comes from the margins, from the social depths, from revolt and disgust and dispossession, from endless cigarettes and a single worn overcoat....A young man can still get up in a Mexico City bookstore and declare war on the literary establishment, give the finger to coffeehouses and Octavio Paz, plunge like a burning wreck into willed obscurity, toil in poverty for twenty years, and wind up forging, at the cost of youth and health and finally life, works that mark a time and point a new way forward....This was Roberto Bolaño's story, and beyond his works' particular merits — which are indeed great, though not quite as great as generally claimed — their value is just this: the tremendous courage that they bespeak." William Deresiewicz, The New Republic 

About the Author

Robert Bolaño was born in Santiago, Chile, in 1953. He spent much of his adult life in Mexico and in Spain, where he died at the age of fifty. His novel The Savage Detectives was named one of the best books of 2007 by The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and The New York Times Book Review.

4.9 22

What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating 4.9 (22 comments)

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Linda Stojek-Bliss , January 11, 2012 (view all comments by Linda Stojek-Bliss)
I know I'm a latecomer to this book but, of everything I read last year, this was the one that left me stunned.

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ab903 , January 05, 2012 (view all comments by ab903)
My favorite aspect of Bolano's writing is how he uses matter-of-fact language to describe the extraordinary; his prose lulls me into forgetting I am reading a masterpiece. This is Bolano's masterpiece.

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Flyzie11 , September 17, 2011
This is an extraordinary book of epic proportions and mind-bending intellect. This story shows the heart and soul of a tortured genius at his best. The twisting nature of this story somehow keeps you captivated page after page after page, whether you can even follow all of the intricate caricatures and scenarios. From graphic to obscene, from sensual to the mundane, an entire world unto itself is somehow made believable and relateable where magical realism meets gritty truth. A truly magnificent work showcasing a rare and amazing brain.

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h2oetry , January 02, 2011 (view all comments by h2oetry)
2666 is a great read, though you should know that it is exhausting on many accounts. During the fourth section(of five), entitled 'The Part About the Crimes,' I had to put it down for nearly a month. The fourth section details hundreds of murders - mainly women. So, if you're squeamish to myriad details of death, be warned. A constant theme, to me, throughout the novel is concealment, whether it is the history of main characters, a beautiful part (my favorite in the novel) comparing written works to a forest, or the crimes, etc. I could go on and on with more, but you should read the book yourself. It was worth the pain and suffering of getting through the novel. Read it! http://bit.ly/dLOqej

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Laura Hauther , January 02, 2011 (view all comments by Laura Hauther)
Originally written as three separate books, each part of the story circles around a mysterious elusive author. As the obsessed academics from the first book chase vague clues to their hero's whereabouts, the story spins away from these characters to explore the endless, senseless murders of local women in the author's last reported location.

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Gill , January 02, 2011
A brilliant book ranging from Germany to Mexico (where most of the action takes place), using the search for an elusive German author as a vehicle to expose the influence of the drug underworld and generally catastrophic lives lived by the poor in N. Mexico. Both social and literary, Roberto Bolãno reached his peak with this masterpiece. A book to be read by anyone who loves great literature and cares about our world.

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A C , January 01, 2011
Bolaño is proof that literature still exists and still matters in a myopic, technocratic age decorated with the pretense of culture.

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otimo , January 01, 2011

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Bennett Starnes , January 01, 2011
Though I began reading this a couple of years ago, I finally finished it in 2010 and am so much the better for it. Bolano's writing is brutal and beautiful. Haunting, yet immediate and compelling. This book covers so many topics, it deserves a different review for each section, and each one is stunning.

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BlueBlaze , January 01, 2011 (view all comments by BlueBlaze)
Five linked novellas. Well worth reading for the section about the killings in northern Mexico, alone.

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Marco Kaye , January 22, 2010
I would like to nominate this for a 2010 Puddly Awards. I think Bolaño would appreciate a Puddly.

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Tele Gram , January 17, 2010 (view all comments by Tele Gram)
Roberto Bolano's last novel, published posthumously, is a striking example of the disintegrating and yet transforming genre. It's themes carry us from the old world into the new world; through the insanity of mankind when chaos is reflected in its cold mirror; with the nature of literature to reveal and yet keep veiled - 2666 creates a small galaxy of these connections & associations that challenge the 21st-century reader to look back over the shoulder of history's disfigured giants. We meet intellectuals with failed and desperate lives clinging to the nearly translucent coattails of a mysterious author. We read through hundreds of murders that turn the stomach and almost numb emotional responses. We are almost swept away in the undercurrent of frightening journeys, elusive loves, art, philosophy, and war: sewn throughout with a thread of magic, both holy and dark. The novel 2666 is an upsetting and unfulfilled creation, but the fabric that Bolano has left us with is meant to be neither a blanket or curtain. I was ever compelled to take his heavy volume and wear it as a hat - so as to let the body sense its gravity.

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epple , January 15, 2010
The best.

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David Brass , January 03, 2010 (view all comments by David Brass)
Rich, varied, challenging, engrossing. A book to be savored!

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John Benschoter , January 03, 2010 (view all comments by John Benschoter)
Truly a magnum opus. Many writers try, but few succeed. Someone asked me what this book was about after I finished it and I drove them from the room expounding on all it contained: art, history, violence, lust, love, and on and on. Probably the most amazing accomplishment is Bolano's ability to maintain the narrative voice while switching styles between the five books. I have read nothing like it and have been loath to start another novel fearing disappointment.

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Maximillian , January 02, 2010
This book left my eyes red from a lack of sleep for three weeks . It left me at a loss for words , the only one I could find near to fitting being " epic " .

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Joseph Hutchison , January 01, 2010
Bolaño's novel is both massive and riveting page after page. I've read nothing like it in the past decade--though Pynchon's Against the Day comes close.

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Tyler Madden , January 01, 2010
I think 2666 is the most important novel of the past decade. Definitely not easy to read, but worth it.

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fmhelper , January 01, 2010
Roberto Bolano's strange, beautiful, haunting, and terrible book - like modernity itself, presenting a brilliant architecture of seemingly disjointed events that propel you forward, piling disclosure and revelation upon disclosure and revelation without granting understanding or closure.

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Morgan Grether , January 01, 2010
As with all his books, Bolano creates a tantalizing world with artists at its center.

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Lance Campion , January 01, 2010
Undoubtedly the best book that I've read within the last decade. It's difficult book to get through, and it's even more difficult to describe. The works of Pynchon and Rushdie come to mind, possibly. This work is utterly unique. I never knew that beauty and violence could coexist so amicably.

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Sidney , January 01, 2010
A great and fabulous book.

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Product Details

ISBN:
9780312429218
Binding:
Trade Paperback
Publication date:
09/01/2009
Publisher:
MACMILLAN PUBLISHING SERVICES
Pages:
898
Height:
1.70IN
Width:
5.60IN
Thickness:
1.50
Number of Units:
1
Copyright Year:
2009
UPC Code:
2800312429210
Author:
Roberto Bolano
Translator:
Natasha Wimmer
Subject:
Detective / General
Subject:
Literature-A to Z
Subject:
Mystery

Ships free on qualified orders.
Add to Cart
$28.00
New Trade Paperback
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