《2666》 Author: [Chile] Roberto Bolaño Publisher: Shanghai People's Publishing House

National Book Critics Circle Award for Best Novel

The New York Times' top ten books of the year

Time Magazine's Best Novels of the Year

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San Francisco Chronicle's 50 Best Novels of the Year

Seattle Times Best Books of the Year

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The 100 Best Spanish-Language Novels of the Past 25 Years

Best novels of the new millennium

The five parts of 2666 tell five independent but mutually complementary stories. The first part, "Literary Critics", tells the story of four literary critics from different regions of Europe (England, France, Spain and Italy), who became friends and lovers because they all liked and studied a German writer, Archimboldi. When they learned that Archimboldi had appeared in Mexico, they went there together. The tone of this part is very calm, even light and pleasant like a light comedy. But at the end, the atmosphere began to become weird, with a strong dreamlike color.

The second part, Amalfitano, is the story of a Chilean professor who moved to Mexico with his family. In the first part, he was a guide for several critics because he claimed to have met Acinboldi. In this part, the critics have disappeared, leaving only the increasingly psychedelic professor. He can not only hear the dead talking to him, but also imitate Duchamp one day and hang a geometry book he accidentally found on his clothesline at home to watch the wind blow the pages. This part also tells the story of the professor's wife who fell in love with a crazy poet and abandoned her family and daughter. The mood of this part is relatively surreal and psychedelic. The atmosphere is depressing and strange. There are even some puzzling diagrams.

The third part, "Fat", is about a black reporter from the New York magazine "Black Dawn". Because the boxing reporter of the same magazine was killed, he took over the man's job and came to Mexico to report a boxing match. Here, he met a group of colleagues from various media and met Amalfitano's daughter. He gradually learned that many cases of women being killed in Santa Teresa, a northern Mexican city, were cruel and their bodies were dumped in the wilderness. He wanted to report on it, but it was difficult. This part is very realistic in writing, and the narrative is concise and powerful. The special thing is (also throughout the book 2666), there are a lot of "digressions" between linear narratives, such as a story of survival at sea told by a passenger when Fat was on a plane, a long monologue heard in the church when he was looking for someone, gossip about an American director, etc. For example, Duchamp, who was drying books in the previous article, also wrote a special paragraph. At the end of this part, Fat went to the prison with the help of someone to interview a suspect in these serial murders, but when he saw the person, he didn't know what to ask.

The fourth part, "Crime", can be said to be the climax of the book. This part looks like a police file, because it records one or more murders of women that occurred every month or even every week from January 1993 to December 1997 in chronological order. It is concise and to the point, including who found someone at a certain time and place, the cause of death, the clothes, the surrounding environment, whether the deceased has been identified, the cause of death according to forensic examination, whether there are suspects, and how the police handled it. Of course, it also includes police stories, drug cartel background, political intervention, detectives from the FBI, "confessors" who desecrate churches, witches who can predict the future, suspects who can call the shots in prison (this suspect is connected to the giant suspect at the end of the third part), etc. The list of "police reports" in this part makes people shocked and angry, and then disappointed and helpless, until they can only accept the cruelty of this reality. For readers, reading this part will be an extremely shocking psychological process.

The fifth part, "Acinboldi", returns to the suspenseful character introduced at the beginning, and he appears. This part can even be read as an independent historical novel, telling the life of Acinboldi, his birth, growth, life as a servant in an aristocratic family, joining the army, World War II, being separated from his family, witnessing torture, becoming a prisoner of war, hearing about the Holocaust, starting to write, being highly recognized and paid attention to by the president of a Hamburg publishing house, and even receiving funding. It is rumored that he is very likely to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, hiding his identity and wandering around Europe, and then meeting his family, until he decides to go to Santa Teresa, a small town in northern Mexico full of death. The mood of this part is leisurely echoing with a sad song. Although some details are no less shocking than the fourth part, this is a tone that makes people feel both fearful and sad and helpless without saying anything.

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