2666

Roberto Bolano’s 2666 is a monster of literary fiction. In the sheer size and scope of its literary ambitions. Among all the books I have read since my love affair with literary fiction began, this has to be the most taxing one I have read. At times it seemed the book would never end and at times I was wondering where the story was taking me. But at the end of the mammoth (almost 900 page) book, I felt like going back to it. Re exploring all the themes of death, passion, intensity and love for books which he endorses in his book.

The book is divided into 5 stories which are all tangentially linked to each other and which in some way or the other take place or are linked to Santa Teresa, a fictional city in Mexico. Here, unemployment is very low, but crime and murder and degradation of society rampant. A lengthy part of the book in the middle is dedicated to explaining murder after murder of young women who were mostly factory workers. These women were mostly brutally raped and tortured before they were left for dead. This is definitely not for those of a weak stomach, but there is an irreducible beauty and detail in his writing which cannot be ignored. The first of the 5 parts deals with the story of 4 literary critics who are obsessed with an enigmatic German writer, Benno Von Archimboldi and the various sexual and emotional twists they get caught up in while trying to search for him. There is another section dealing with an American reporter, Oscar Fate, who ends up in Santa Teresa to cover a boxing fight but gets involved somehow in the killings taking place. The final part of the book deals with Archimboldi’s story.

It seems Bolano based the fictional town of Santa Teresa on the Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez where there were similar killings of women. He is an author I heard of recently only and is a Chilean whose works are written in Spanish originally. 2666 was actually published posthumously, since he died in 2003 at the age of 50 of a liver ailment. Though he seemed to have been quite famous, he remains a bit of an enigmatic figure who never used to give much interviews or did not take them seriously when giving them. His previous biggest critical and commercial success was the book ‘The Savage Detectives’ the English translation of which is also available. While his writing is definitely not for anyone other than the advanced readers of literary fiction, I would say this book is something every serious reader should give a shot at.