Patience and good eyesight are what you need to finish this 900-page gargantua of Latin American fiction. But it's well worth persevering: 2666 has the power to mesmerise, and was justifiably hailed as a masterwork on its publication in Spanish in 2004. The author, Roberto Bolaño, had died one year earlier, at the age of 50, while waiting for a liver transplant in a hospital in Spain. His stock ...

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