2666, by Roberto Bolaño
Not every writer would write a novel in the form of a completely invented encyclopaedia of imaginary writers and call the result Nazi Literature in the Americas. Not everyone, either, would write a novel in two paragraphs, the second less than 12 words long, or produce a novel about a torturer-poet who writes his work in jet-trails in the sky. As soon as Roberto Bolaño came to the attention of the world, it was clear that, however extraordinary his work seemed in formal design and subject, he might have something even more extraordinary under wraps. After his death in 2003, word emerged from the Spanish-speaking world of a gigantic novel called 2666. A previous large-scale novel, The Savage Detectives, has been a major word-of-mouth success among writers, with its wild, elegiac portrait of 1970s circles of Central American radical poets in their garrets, invading the mansions of patrons, or tearing up the roads. 2666 has still bigger goals in its sights, and though the mind shrinks from parts of it, it is impossible not to be overwhelmed by its ambition, and much of its achievement.
Bolaño was Chilean by birth, and one of the defining moments of his imaginative life was his attempt, in 1973, to join Allende’s cause. After Pinochet’s coming to power, he was imprisoned and tortured for eight days, an experience which frequently enters his fiction. He fled Chile for Mexico, El Salvador, France and Spain, living in near-destitution, writing poetry with no success; it has been suggested that he went through a period of heroin addiction during this period, something his estate and family denies. In middle age, he turned to writing fiction, much of which is concerned with the lives of radical poets, extreme violence in a political context, and impassioned late-night debate.
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