2666
Roberto Bolaño's posthumous five-part novel, in the Picador edition of Natasha Wimmer's translation.
Released in 2004, a year after Bolaño’s death, the novel runs past 1,100 pages in Spanish. It follows an elusive German author and the unsolved murders of women in Santa Teresa, a city inspired by Ciudad Juárez, and it also reaches the Eastern Front of the Second World War, the academic world and journalism. Fonseca came across the boxed Farrar, Straus and Giroux set at 21, and its cover drew him in.
Recommended by 1 Person
Carlos Fonseca
I vividly remember encountering, when I was 21 in 2008, the FSG translation of Roberto Bolaño's 2666. It was a beautiful boxed set containing three books, and the cover was such a wonderful baroque mixture of religious iconography, natural history, and playful doodling that I was immediately driven to this Latin American writer whose name, surprisingly, I hadn't encountered yet.
Article · June 2023
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