Roberto Bolano’s 2666

There’s nothing like dying to make you famous. Case in point: Roberto Bolano, a Chilean novelist who had little success up until the almost instant canonization that followed his 2003 death. Besides death, part of the reason for the recent rise of Bolano’s critical stock is that many of his books are just now being translated into English, most recently 2666, his posthumous final novel. 2666 is an ambitious, massive book (almost 900 pages) that seeks to do no less than to prove that literature can be meaningful in a world full of death and incomprehensible violence.