2666, Part 1: The Part About The Critics

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.