2666, Roberto Bolano
2666, Roberto Bolano
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2666
A Novel

Author: Roberto Bolaño, Natasha Wimmer

Narrator: various narrators, John Lee, Armando Durán, G. Valmont Thomas, Scott Brick, Grover Gardner

Unabridged: 39 hr 16 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 05/27/2009

Synopsis

Composed in the last years of Roberto Bolaño’s life, 2666 was greeted across Europe and Latin America as his most brilliant achievement, surpassing even his previous work in its strange beauty, daring experimentation, and epic scope. The book’s subject matter ranges from the heady heights of literature and love to the gritty realism of violence and death as it explores how humans make sense of senseless events. Its throng of unforgettable characters includes academics and convicts, writers and cops, pursuing their own separate yet interrelated quests for meaning: an enigmatic Prussian novelist who disappears from the public eye after the death of his lover; a group of literary critics who bond through their shared love of the novelist’s works; an African American journalist sent to Mexico on a sports beat in the wake of his mother’s death; and a Spanish professor and widowed father whose mind is beginning to lose its grip on reality. Their lives intersect in the urban sprawl of Santa Teresa, a fictional Juárez on the US-Mexico border, where the serial killings of hundreds of young working class women remain unsolved.

About Roberto Bolaño

Roberto Bolaño (1953–2003) was born in Santiago, Chile, and later lived in Mexico, France, and Spain. He has been acclaimed by the Los Angeles Times as “by far the most exciting writer to come from south of the Rio Grande in a long time” and as “the real thing and the rarest” by Susan Sontag. Among his many prizes are the prestigious Premio Herralde de Novela and the Premio Rómulo Gallegos. Bolaño is widely considered the greatest Latin American writer of his generation. He wrote nine novels, two story collections, and five books of poetry before his death at the age of fifty.

About Natasha Wimmer

Natasha Wimmer’s translation of Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives was chosen as one of the ten best books of 2007 by the Washington Post and New York Times. Her translation of his 2666 won the National Book Award’s Best Novel of the Year as well as the PEN Prize.

About John Lee

John Lee is an illustrator from Memphis, TN currently living in Brooklyn, NY. He received his BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute, and MFA from SVA's Illustration as Visual Essay program. He's worked in a variety of markets including: storyboarding, advertising, editorial, book, fashion and web illustration, as well as live drawing and reportage. He has also taught illustration at the Memphis College of Art.

About Armando Durán

Armando Durán has appeared in films, television, and regional theaters throughout the West Coast. For the last decade he has been a member of the resident acting company at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. In 2009 he was named by AudioFile as Best Voice in Biography and History for his narration of Che Guevara. A native Californian, he divides his time between Los Angeles and Ashland, Oregon.

About G. Valmont Thomas

G. Valmont Thomas, a longtime member of the acting company at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, has also been a faculty member at the Johnny Carson School of Film and Television at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. His voice may also be heard in a number of video games and in advertisements for radio and television.

About Scott Brick

Scott Brick, an acclaimed voice artist, screenwriter, and actor, has performed on film, television, and radio. He attended UCLA and spent ten years in a traveling Shakespeare company. Passionate about the spoken word, he has narrated a wide variety of audiobooks. winning won more than fifty AudioFile Earphones Awards and several of the prestigious Audie Awards. He was named a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine and the Voice of Choice for 2016 by Booklist magazine.

About Grover Gardner

AudioFile named Alexander Adams one of the Best Voices of the Century and now includes him in their annual Golden Voices roundup of top narration talent. He has recorded over 500 audiobooks. To date he has won eighteen of AudioFile's coveted Earphone Awards and one Audie Award.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Christy on October 10, 2009

Roberto Bolaño's 2666 has been described as "the most electrifying literary event of the year" (Lev Grossman, Time), as "a landmark in what's possible for the novel as a form" (Jonathan Lethem, The New York Times Book Review), as "a work of devastating power and complexity" (Adam Mansbach, The Bosto......more

Goodreads review by brian on September 06, 2024

the english version comes out in november. no spoilers. just here to make three points: 1) the blood and guts 2) the disaster 3) the women 1) y’know that bookbuzz when you’re walking around the world and it’s all colored with the life of the book you’re reading? 894 pages of bolano’s epic and i feel li......more

Goodreads review by Valeriu on October 07, 2024

Un roman extraordinar (unul dintre primele cinci din secolul XXI), despre care am scris de multe ori pe blog și despre care am vorbit prietenilor și studenților mei cu entuziasm. Înainte de a se interna pentru ultima oară în spital - în preajma morții, deci -, prozatorul i-a înmînat Carolinei Lopez......more

Goodreads review by Sean Barrs on December 07, 2020

With as much creative energy as Joyce’s Ulysses, and with as much history and depth as Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, Bolano’s magnum opus is a bold statement against literature itself. However, with such a book comes all the tedium you would expect from Moby Dick. As a result, this book w......more

Goodreads review by Adam on March 22, 2020

What a novel this is - long, ambitious, unfinished. It is in some ways a work of desperation, written by a dying man, thrumming with the worst kinds of violence. And yet, these 900 intertwining pages speak to the beauty and timelessness of art too, and the enduring nature of criticism. At once liter......more

Quotes

“This surreal novel can’t be described; it has to be experienced in all its crazed glory.” Stephen King, #1 New York Times bestselling author

“A display of novelistic mastery and as devastating a reading experience as you are likely ever to encounter.” Time

“Every scene is powerful and realistic; yet the overall effect is hallucinatory and dreamlike.” O, The Oprah Magazine

“[2666] is divided into five books, each read here by a different narrator, each in his way extraordinary. John Lee is especially subtle with accents, Armando Durán brings his mostly Spanish-flavored section to vivid life, G. Valmont Thomas lends ‘The Part about Fate’ a deadpan humor, and Grover Gardner gives the saga of the writer Benno von Archimboldi a compelling pace. Scott Brick[’s] characters’ voices are outstanding.” AudioFile

“Think of David Lynch, Marcel Duchamp, and the Bob Dylan of ‘Highway 61 Revisited,’ all at the peak of their lucid yet hallucinatory powers.” New York Times

“Should cement his reputation as a world-class novelist…Bolaño has joined the immortals.” Washington Post

“Bolaño’s true masterpiece…He writes with a horror that is both haunting and deeply humane.” Amazon.com

“Bolaño grabs us by the scruff of the neck and pushes our heads into the abyss. For Bolaño, the year 2666 is the symbolic culmination of humanity’s neglect and violence, a state of being that has become our modus operandi…That, Bolaño suggests, is where it all starts: at the very spot where we stop paying attention and slip into deadened stasis.” The Millions

“Bolano’s masterwork…An often shockingly raunchy and violent tour de force.” New York Review of Books

“It is safe to predict that no novel this year will have as powerful an effect on the reader as this one.” Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Awards

  • National Book Critics Circle Award
  • Oprah Irresistible Read
  • Los Angeles Times Best Book
  • New York Times Bestseller
  • Indie Next List
  • San Francisco Chronicle Best Book
  • Seattle Times Best Book
  • New York Times Book Review Top 10 Book of the Year
  • Time Magazine Top 10 Book
  • Publishers Weekly Pick
  • BookRiot Pick
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