2666

2666 is a novel by the Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño, assembled by his literary heirs after his death and published in 2004; it is widely regarded as one of the most important works of twenty-first-century Latin American literature. The Chinese edition, translated by Zhao Deming, runs to roughly 700,000 characters and is divided into five relatively independent yet interlinked parts. In the first part, "The Part About the Critics," four European scholars living in England, France, Spain, and Italy meet and become romantically involved through their shared study of the German writer Benno von Archimboldi; a rumor that Archimboldi has appeared in Mexico draws them to the border city of Santa Teresa. The second part, "The Part About Amalfitano," turns to a Chilean philosophy professor who has moved to that city: his wife has left him for a poet in a mental hospital, and he drifts day by day toward the edge of sanity in the desolate desert city. In the third part, "The Part About Fate," Oscar Fate, a Black journalist from New York, travels to Santa Teresa to cover a boxing match in place of a murdered colleague, and after meeting locals—especially the professor's daughter—gradually senses another side of the city. The fourth part, "The Part About the Crimes," is the longest and darkest section of the book, recording in an almost archival manner, year by year and month by month, the many murders and dumped bodies of women in Santa Teresa between 1993 and 1997, along with the negligence and corruption of the police and local authorities. The fifth part, "The Part About Archimboldi," finally brings onstage the mysterious writer who runs through the whole book, tracing his German experiences before and after the Second World War, his military service and witnessing of massacres, through to his concealment of his identity and eventual journey to Santa Teresa. The novel stitches literary criticism, philosophical speculation, journalism, crime dossiers, and personal history into an immense web, depicting violence, corruption, and the impotence of intellectuals in a cold, restrained style, and gathering the historical traumas of the entire twentieth century into one fictional border city.