BOOK 249: 2666: ROBERTO BOLAÑO

Composed in the last two years of Bolaño's life, 2666 has been greeted as his greatest achievement, surpassing even his previous work in its strangeness, beauty, and scope. Its throng of unforgettable characters include academics and convicts, an American sportswriter, an elusive German novelist, and a teenage student caring for her widowed, mentally unstable father. Their lives intersect in the desert sprawl of Santa Teresa--a fictional Juárez--on the US-Mexico border, where hundreds of young factory workers, in the novel as in life, have disappeared. Audacious, impassioned and profoundly inspired, 2666 is Roberto Bolaño’s masterwork.
(From Goodreads)

TRIVIA: The meaning of the title, 2666, is typically elusive; even Bolaño's friends did not know why. Larry Rohter, writing for The New York Times, notes that Bolaño apparently ascribed an apocalyptic quality to the number.Henry Hitchings noted that "the novel's cryptic title is one of its many grim jokes" and maybe a reference to the biblical Exodus from Egypt, supposedly 2,666 years after God created the earth. Some speculate the name to be associated with a future date, or to represent the evils of the novel through the number associated with the Devil, 666.

While the number does not appear in the book, it does appear in some of Bolaño's other books—in Amulet, a Mexico City road looks like "a cemetery in the year 2666". The Savage Detectives contains an approximate reference: "And Cesárea said something about days to come... and the teacher, to change the subject, asked her what times she meant and when they would be. And Cesárea named a date, sometime around the year 2600. Two thousand six hundred and something".

In 2016, it was adapted into an 11-hour play by Julien Gosselin and his troupe "Si vous pouviez lécher mon cœur". It was presented at the Festival d'Avignon and then in Paris at the Odéon theatre as part of Festival d'Automne.

(From Wikipedia)

MY VERDICT: I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and you have to because it’s quite long. However my favourite section was the first and even though the rest of the book is very interesting and engaging nothing after it lived up to that section, I did absolutely love everything about the elusive novelist.