2666 [Unabridged] [Paperback]

'Now's the chance to immerse yourself in his labyrinthine portrait of the violence of the 20th century and the possibilities of literature.'
--Guardian

`Roberto Bolaño's posthumous masterpiece... It establishes the Chilean as one of the giants of Latin American literature' --Sunday Telegraph

`The late, great Chilean novelist made his grand statement in this, his last book... Anarchic, lyrical and hugely ambitious'
--Metro

`With The Savage Detectives having already been proclaimed Roberto Bolaño's "masterpiece", a new superlative is needed for this, the Chilean author's colossal final work... All five parts are wonderful but the crowning glory is the last, where the many threads come together in a satisfying conclusion --Observer

`Grand in scale and ambitious in scope, as interested in characters' dreams as their loves and obsessions, it's a book to immerse yourself in' --Mail Daily

`'2666 is a convincing attempt to debate the purpose of fiction in a world of pain. Natasha Wimmer's top-notch translation from the Spanish bears few signs of the labour it must have taken'
--Daily Telegraph

'My favourite book of the year... Whereas so much long contemporary fiction is a struggle to get through, Bolaño is always interesting. If the first and foremost requirement of fiction is that it be interesting, then there is no other contemporary writer as pleasing and successful as Bolaño.' --Edmund White, Books of the Year, TLS

'This year I was so fascinated by Natasha Wimmer's fine translation of 2666 by Roberto Bolaño that straight away I read it again... Built in five colossal semi-autonomous parts, the work more resembles a melancholy wreath of novels, brimming with incident and fable - a remarkable achievement.'
--Angus Trumble, Books of the Year, TLS

'My reading this year was dominated by Roberto Bolaño's two massive novels, The Savage Detectives and 2666. The first is the superior, but 2666, for all its occasional longueurs, is still quite magnificent. Bolaño links seamlessly South American, US and European traditions; modernism with gritty realism and the crime thriller. These are both important works and the advent of Bolaño as a significant moment in the history of modern fiction.'
--Kazuo Ishiguro, Books of the Year, Observer

'Books can do so many things - sometimes they spur you on to study, sometimes they entertain and sometimes they drive you to write yourself. Every time I read Bolano I feel so inspired, I just want to write...He's a genius - the expansiveness he creates, how he relates one book to another - he's set a new template for writing. [When I read] I look for new landscapes, new experiences and, most importantly, for beautifully written books. That's why I love Bolano - he's a master of language.' --Patti Smith in 'Elle'

"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) based in part on the still unsolved murders of hundreds of women in Ciudad Juarez, in the Sonora desert near the Texas border." --FRANCISCO GOLDMAN, "The 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." --J. A. MASOLIVER RODENAS, "La Vanguardia" "One of those strange, exquisite, and astonishing experiences that literature offers us only once in a very long time . . . to see . . . a writer in full pursuit of the Total Novel, one that not only completes his life's work but redefines it and raises it to new dizzying heights." --RODRIGO FRESAN, "El Pais """

"Bolano's savoir-faire is incredible ... The exploded narrative reveals a virtuosity that we rarely encounter, and one cannot help being bowled over by certain bravura passages--to single one out, the series of reports describing murdered young women, which is both magnificent and unbearable. We won't even mention the 'resolution' of this infernal 2666, a world of a novel in which the power of words triumphs over savagery." --Baptiste Liger, L'EXPRESS

"Splendid ... The jaw-dropping synthesis of a brief but incredibly fertile career." --Fabrice Gabriel, LES INROCKUPTIBLES

"The event of the spring: with 2666 Roberto Bolano has given us his most dense, complex, and powerful novel, a meditation on literature and evil that begins with a sordid newspaper item in contemporary Mexico." --Morgan Boedec, CHRONIC ART

"Includingthe imaginary and the mythic alongside the real in his historiography, without ever dabbling in the magical realism dear to many of his Latin-American peers, Bolano strews his chronicle with dreams and visions. As in the films of David Lynch (with whom Bolano's novel shares a certain kinship) these become a catalyst for reflection ... In such darkness, one must keep one's eyes wide open. Bolano invites us to do just that." --Sabine Audrerie, LA CROIX

"An immense moment for literature ... With prodigious skill and his inimitable art of digression, Bolano leads us to the gates of his own hell. May he burn in peace." --TECHNIKART

"Bolano constructs a chaos that has an order all its own ... The state of the world today transmuted into literature." --Isabelle Ruf, LE TEMPS

"To confront the reader with the horror of the contemporary world was Bolano's guiding ambition. He succeeded, to say the least. Upset, shocked, sometimes even sickened, at times one is tempted to shut the book because it's unbearable to read. Don't shut it. Far from being a blood-and-guts thriller meant to entertain, 2666 is a 'visceral realist" portrait of the human condition in the twenty-first century." --Anna Topaloff, MARIANNE

"On every page the reader marvels, hypnotized, at the capacity of this baroque writer to encompass all literary genres in a single fascinating, enigmatic story. No doubt many readers will find 2666 inexhaustible to interpretation. It is a fully realized work by a pure genius at the height of his powers." --LIRE

"His masterpiece ... Bolano borrows from vaudeville and the campus novel, from noir and pulp, from science fiction, from the Bildungsroman, from war novels; the tone of hiswriting oscillates between humor and total darkness, between the simplicity of a fairytale and the false neutrality of a police report." --Minh Tran Huy, LE MAGAZINE LITTERAIRE (Paris)

"The book explores evil with irony, without any theory or resolution, relying on storytelling alone as its saving grace... Each story is an adventure: a fresco at once horrifying, delicate, grotesque, redundant, and absurd, revealed by the flashlight of a child who stands at the threshold of a cave he will never leave." --Philippe Lancon, LIBERATION

"If THE SAVAGE DETECTIVES recounted the end of a century of avant-gardes and ideological battles, 2666, more radically, evokes the end of humanity as we know it. Apocalyptic in this sense, wavering between decomposition and totality, endlessly in love with people and books, Bolano's last novel ranges over the world and history like the knight Percival, who in Bolano's words 'wears his fool's motley underneath his armor.'" --Fabienne Dumontet, LE MONDE DES LIVRES (Paris)

"A work of genius: a work of immense lucidity and narrative cunning, written with a unique mixture of creative power and intimate existential desperation, the work of a master whose voice has all the authority and seeming effortlessness that we associate with the great classics of the ages ... It is impossible to read this book without feeling the earth shift beneath one's feet. It is impossible to venture deep into writing so unforgiving without feeling inwardly moved--by a shudder of fear, maybe even horror, but also by its need to pay attention, by its desire for clarity, by its hunger for the real." --Andres Ibanaz, BLANCO Y NEGRO

"Without a doubt the greatest of Bolano'sproductions ... The five parts of this masterwork can be read separately, as five isolated novels; none loses any of its brilliance, but what's lost is the grandeur that they achieve in combination, the grandeur of a project truly rare in fiction nowadays, one that can be enjoyed only in its totality." --Ana Maria Moix, EL PAIS

"Make no mistake, 2666 is a work of huge importance ... a complex literary experience, in which the author seeks to set down his nightmares while he feels time running out. Bolano inspires passion, even when his material, his era, and his volume seem overwhelming. This could only be published in a single volume, and it can only be read as one." --EL MUNDO

"An absolute masterpiece ... Bolano writes almost without adjectives, but in his prose this leads to double meanings. The narration is pure metonymy: it omits feelings in favor of facts. A phone call or a sex act can express real tragedy, the sweep of the vast human condition." --Andres Lomena, LA OPINION DE MALAGA

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'A masterpiece, the electrifying literary event of the year. 2666: The Best Book of 2008.' --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

'One of the greatest and most distinctive voices in modern fiction.' --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

'Not only a supreme capstone to his own vaulting ambition, but a landmark in what's possible for the novel.' --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

'Bolano's last and greatest novel... A giant work, strange and marvellous and impossible funny.' --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

'Bolano's masterwork... narrative velocity, polyphonic range, inventiveness and bravery.'
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

'The most hotly anticipated novel of the new year... A visionary exploration of life and literature.' --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

'His masterpiece.' --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

'Bolaño, from Chile, has long been recognised as one of the greats of late 20th- and early 21st-century fiction.' --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

One of the most talked-about novels of 2008: the visionary epic from a Latin American genius

Written with burning intesity in the last years of Roberto Bolaño’s life, 2666 has been greeted across the world as the great writer's masterpiece, surpassing everything in imagination, beauty and scope. It is a novel on an astonishing scale from a passionate visionary. ‘The best book of 2008 … A masterpiece, the electrifying literary event of the year’ Time ‘Readers who have snacked on Haruki Murakami will feast on Roberto Bolaño’ Sunday Times ‘Bolaño makes you feel changed for having read him; he adjusts your angle of view on the world’ Guardian

Roberto Bolaño 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 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.