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| 2666: A Novel | 
| Author: Roberto Bolano
Creator: Natasha Wimmer
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Category: Book
List Price: $30.00
Buy New: $18.00
You Save: $12.00 (40%)
New (25) Used (6) Collectible (6) from $18.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  20 reviews
Sales Rank: 100
Media: Hardcover
Edition: First Edition
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 912
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.7
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.6 x 1.9
ISBN: 0374100144
Dewey Decimal Number: 863.64
EAN: 9780374100148
ASIN: 0374100144
Publication Date: November 11, 2008
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com Review
Amazon Best of the Month, November 2008: It was one thing to read Roberto Bolano's novel The Savage Detectives last year and have your mind thrilled and expanded by a sexy, meandering masterpiece born whole into the English language. It was still another to read it and know, from the advance reports of Spanish readers, that Bolano's true masterpiece was still to come. And here it is: 2666, the 898-page novel he sprinted to finish before his early death in 2003, again showing Bolano's mesmerizing ability to spin out tale after tale that balance on the edge between happy-go-lucky hilarity and creeping dread. But where the motion of The Savage Detectives is outward, expanding in wider and wider orbit to collect everything about our lonely world, 2666, while every bit as omnivorous, ratchets relentlessly toward a dark center: the hundreds of mostly unsolved murders of women in the desert borderlands of maquiladoras and la migra in northern Mexico. He takes his time getting there--he tells three often charming book-length tales before arriving at the murders--but when he does, in a brutal and quietly strange landscape where neither David Lynch nor Cormac McCarthy's Anton Chigurh would feel out of place, he writes with a horror that is both haunting and deeply humane. --Tom Nissley
Product Description
THE POSTHUMOUS MASTERWORK FROM “ONE OF THE GREATEST AND MOST INFLUENTIAL MODERN WRITERS” (JAMES WOOD, THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW) Composed in the last years of Roberto Bolano’s life, 2666 was greeted across Europe and Latin America as his highest achievement, surpassing even his previous work in its strangeness, beauty, and scope. Its throng of unforgettable characters includes academics and convicts, an American sportswriter, an elusive German novelist, and a teenage student and her widowed, mentally unstable father. Their lives intersect in the urban sprawl of SantaTeresa—a fictional Juarez—on the U.S.-Mexico border, where hundreds of young factory workers, in the novel as in life, have disappeared.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 15 more reviews...
 not a finished or well edited book, and not well written January 9, 2009
while parts are enjoyable, the first section especially, too much extemporaneous material makes its way in and then has nothing to do with anything else; in general, it is not well written, and it's certainly not a finished novel.
it is lost on me how anyone could find the thing deserving of five stars.
 Along for the Ride January 6, 2009
This work, by one of a handful of brilliant writers, spans the whole of the imagination. Clearly without equal, the late Robeto Bolano, has made concrete dreams and razor edged light seem commonplace. Pervasive, funny and savage all at the same instant
Year's best novel 2008 here's why........ January 4, 2009
I bought this book because most of the reviews were interesting but ambiguous. The reviews just left me curious. Really, the scope of this book is large and hard to decribe but the reason I would suggest it is that it is completely fascinating. Bolano's characters are spellbinding, odd and they hold your attention so well it's almost hypnotic. Reading this book has the effect of driving up on a bad car accident where bodies are strewn in the road: you keep looking whether you mean to or not. Another thing that I love about Bolano's writing is that he does not give you the option of becoming bored. He writes in short, vivid scenes. Scenes where something could go wrong, someone could get hurt, the character is scared or lost. Everything makes you want to stay. If you pick this up it will speak to you no matter who you are and you may have trouble putting it down.........
Not for everyone, but if for you, then DO. January 2, 2009
I agree that this is absolutely not for all. You need to be open minded, I want to say intellectual but I suppose I here am the exception as I cannot think of the word and hardly am calling those who dislike it dumb. An academia of sorts? Perhaps one who likes to be intellectually stimulated but has yet to find their own counterpart to fit that role... but in a sort of Chuck Palahniuk but not quick as raunchy way. lol. WOW ... did that make sense?
Those Who Toil December 31, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Perhaps Bolano's own words best describes this work:
"Now even bookish pharmacists are afraid to take on the great, imperfect, torrential works, books that blaze paths into the unknown. They choose the perfect exercises of the great masters. Or what amounts to the same thing: they want to watch the great masters spar, but they no interest in real combat, when the great masters struggle against something, that something that terrifies us all, that something that cows us and spurs us on, amid blood and mortal wounds and stench."
Bolano's final, colossal work is just that. Weaving five disparate narratives that brush, grate, and engage in shadow play with each other around the still turning point of this work- Santa Teresa (Ciudad Juarez), Mexico- Bolano has undoubtedly attempted to impart upon the reader those feelings most essential to Death and Man's existence within a Universe dictated by Nature, Chance, and Uncertainty. The words painted across this ambitious masterpiece are unmistakably those of a dying man. After reading this work, I am left with more questions than when I began. Counterintuitively enough, that is a good thing. While this work by no means exhibits perfection, it spurs us on, coaxing us through its multitudes, to excavate and face our own questions, whatever those may be.
On a lighter note, the obscure literary, philosophical, and historical references make for interesting detective work as the novel is read. This is not a work to be missed and these sort are few and far between.
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