2666

With an introduction by Ben Lerner

The truth is we never stop being children, terrible children covered in sores and knotty veins and tumors and age spots, but ultimately children, in other words we never stop clinging to life because we are life.

Santa Teresa, on the Mexico-US border: an urban sprawl, a vortex for lost souls. Convicts and academics find themselves here, as does an American sportswriter, a teenage student with her widowed father, and a reclusive, ''missing'' author. But there is a darker side to the town: girls and women are disappearing at an alarming rate and it is fast becoming the scene of a series of horrifying crimes. As 2666 progresses, the sense of conspiracy grows, and the shadow of the apocalypse is drawing closer.

Written with burning intensity in the last years of Roberto Bolano''s life, 2666 became a sensation on publication and has been hailed across the world as Bolano''s masterpiece. Terrifying, awe-inspiring and beautiful, it is the classic novel that has come to define one of Latin America''s greatest writers.