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2666 (2004)

by Roberto Bolaño

Other authors: See the other authors section.

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingConversations / Mentions
6,5821831,426 (4.12)8 / 728
An American sportswriter, an elusive German novelist, and a teenage student interact in an urban community on the U.S.-Mexico border where hundreds of young factory workers have disappeared.
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English (158)  Spanish (6)  Dutch (4)  German (4)  Portuguese (Portugal) (3)  French (3)  Italian (2)  Norwegian (Bokmål) (1)  Japanese (1)  All languages (182)
Showing 1-5 of 158 (next | show all)
Sprawling epic.

This took me a long time read, 116 days I think. There is in no doubt that it's masterful, Bolaño's writing is stylish and throbs with imagery and erudition, a rhapsodic climax to his life (he died whilst writing/editing this).

2666 is a five part gargantuan tome, each episode orbiting in varying proximity around a North-Mexican town, riddled with murders. It also has a backdrop of a German author's mystique (and life in the last chapter) which together serve leitmotifs and themes of loss, death, absence and violence.

The part about the crimes was particularly impressive. The relentless catalogue of death was special and like nothing I've read before. It had to be that long and there had to be that many for such devastating effect.

It reminded me of a dark David Mitchell novel; effortless genre-switching, bewildering pedantry.

It's definitely worth the effort, a great, great, novel, abundant with the human condition and the weaknesses and strengths of our species. ( )
  Dzaowan | Feb 15, 2024 |
I’ve never read anything quite like this. There’s definitely a reward in reading “2666,” but it’s nothing like other expansive books of this size and hype. It’s no “Infinite Jest,” for instance, in that you don’t feel this massive cerebral payout at the end, but you feel something when you’ve finished it. All in all, there is plenty of space for the reader to chew on what they’ve read, and that’s quite enough for me. There’s a high-brow element that doubles the reader’s satisfaction (because of said element, I can use the term “satisfaction” in my review). ( )
  GDBrown | Feb 15, 2024 |
A novel in 5 parts? 5 linked novels?

Interesting, exhausting, glad I read it but it is just too long and not as tight as it might have been.

We have academics in search of the mysterious German writer Archimboldi they all study. It's almost a club--and no one knows what happened to the author. These 3 go searching in Santa Teresa, Mexico, where rumor has it he has gone.

We have a drafted WW2 German soldier, Hans Reiter, who leaves his mother and sister and goes with his unit to Romania, Russia, and parts unnamed. He sees things, he is a bit of a loner, he manages to stay alive.

In Santa Teresa women are regularly murdered, there has to be a serial killer. (This is part 4, and it is exhausting.) Are the police incompetent? Are they afraid the cartel is involved and don't want to cross them? Or is the cartel involved and they are paying off/called off the police? They do occasionally make one-off domestic violence arrest. And then they pull in one man, a German immigrant who worked with one of the victims, and charge him with several of the murders. He holds press conferences and from jail and seems to run the place.

Back to Europe, we learn more about Reiter's life after the war. He is a survivor, and a loner, and we learn how these parts connect together.

Interesting, but I found there to be big gaps (ch 4 is exhausting and hard and even more so because what is Bolano's point?--it was inspired by murders in Juarez, but Bolano does not/did not get to make his point about murders of women vs police vs cartels vs what he is getting at?). And it's just unnecessarily long. The first two chapters are actually fairly funny knowing how some academics work, but they are still too long. ( )
  Dreesie | Feb 4, 2024 |
Sprawling, fragmented, tedious for very long stretches, lifeless characters: '2666' is more of a relentless assault course than an education or pleasure. I can't believe I persisted to the end, but I'm glad I did, for the challenge of taking on a 'big' literary book. It may be clever, heroic and worthy as literary struggle and play, but it's not enriched or disrupted my sense of life and people, beyond marvelling at Bolano's capacity to indulge in postmodern meta-self-referential obsessions and concentric circles of storytelling within storytelling. Ho hum.

Update :

So, clearly I missed a lot in this. Many thanks to Chris Via for his excellent videos on 2666, I should have watched those before embarking on reading this. (Maybe I’ll read it again….) I would urge you to ignore my review and star rating and head straight to Chris’ YouTube channel at Leaf by Leaf https://youtube.com/@LeafbyLeaf. Mea culpa. ( )
  breathslow | Jan 27, 2024 |
Reads like a fake documentary. Not my cup of tea. ( )
  kakadoo202 | Dec 10, 2023 |
Showing 1-5 of 158 (next | show all)
”2066” är en av dessa sällsynta romaner man skulle kunna bosätta sig i.
 
Nu bör alla som inte redan skaffat och läst den ha slängt på sig halsduken i farten, störtat ut i hösten och vara i fullt fläng på väg mot närmaste bokhandel.

(Note: this is not the same review as the other one by the same reviewer. It concerns a different translation.)
added by Jannes | editDagens Nyheter, Jonas Thente (Oct 19, 2010)
 
Lever han upp till sina ambitioner? Tveklöst. ”2066” är en av dessa sällsynta romaner man skulle kunna bosätta sig i.
 
"2666" ist ein kühnes, wildes, hochexperimentelles Ungetüm von einem Roman. In der vorliegenden Form keineswegs perfekt - besonders der zweite, dritte und fünfte Teil haben große Längen -, ist er doch immer noch so ziemlich allem überlegen, was in den letzten Jahren veröffentlicht wurde.
added by lophuels | editFrankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Daniel Kehlmann (Oct 14, 2010)
 
Theorie her oder hin, "2666" ist ein ungeheuerlicher Wal von einem Roman, er bläst seine Fontänen hoch in den Äther.
 

» Add other authors (10 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Roberto Bolañoprimary authorall editionscalculated
Amutio, RobertTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Carmignani, IlideTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Hansen, ChristianTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Wimmer, NatashaTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed

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Epigraph
An oasis of horror in a desert of boredom. -Charles Baudelaire
Dedication
For Alexandra Bolaño and Lautaro Bolaño
First words
The first time that Jean-Claude Pelletier read Benno von Archimboldi was Christmas 1980, in Paris, when he was nineteen years old and studying German literature.
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Volume 1 of the Italian edition of 2666 in two parts: La parte de los críticos; La parte de Amalfitano; La parte de Fate
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An American sportswriter, an elusive German novelist, and a teenage student interact in an urban community on the U.S.-Mexico border where hundreds of young factory workers have disappeared.

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