[BOOK] 2666 by Roberto Bolaño

Bolano intended for 2666 to be published as five books but after he passed (he barely managed to finish the novel before his untimely death), his family and publishers decided against it.
2666 is one story made of many stories, involving various, very different individuals, moving around Europe and North America. This is a beautifully massive novel with a microscopic view of what humans get up to. That's why it is a novel that reads like a beautiful and harsh literary trip of anthropology, biographies, dreams, real crime, war and politics and a essay on literature at the same time. It is fascinating and sometimes terribly ugly. Everything in this novel centres around a mysterious novelist, who is only known by his books and every character connects with the Mexican border town of Santa Teresa where the North American Free Trade Association has created a cheap labour centre for US companies. Santa Teresa is also a drug trafficking city and is known for the disappearance and brutal murders of young women. Hundreds of cases remain unsolved.

2666 is the story of a group of literary professors searching for the novelist who's literature they have based their careers on. The second book follows their Mexican colleague who lives in Santa Teresa and worries about his daughter and his own mental health. Third book is about a US journalist forced to travel to Santa Teresa following a boxing story where he learns about the murders, the horrible murders which we study in book four. In book five we get to know the mysterious writer. In a way each book takes a different view of Santa Teresa and what is happening there. In other ways, everything else is happening everywhere.

There are scenes where Bolano follows the thoughts of someone who sits and watches TV. Bolano follows his dreams as he falls asleep while watching and from there we move to follow what is going on in the TV itself. There are horribly statistical scenes where young girls are found raped and tortured and a scene where a German WW2 soldier finds notes in a abandoned house and we dive into the biography of the long dead russian writer. Just like someone said; "Bolano comes close to reimagining the novel." [Anagrama]
- Sigurður Harðarson