Santa Teresa, on the Mexico US border, is an urban sprawl that draws in lost souls. Among them are three academics on the trail of a reclusive German author; a New York reporter on his first Mexican assignment; a widowed philosopher; and a police detective in love with an elusive older woman. But there is darker side still to the town. It is an emblem of corruption, violence and decadence, and one from which, over the course of a decade, hundreds of women have mysteriously, often brutally, disappeared. Told in five parts, 2666 is the epic novel that defines one of Latin America's greatest writers and his unique vision of the modern world. Conceived on an astonishing scale, and in the last years of Roberto Bolano's life with burning, visionary commitment, it has been greeted across Europe and Latin America as his masterpiece, surpassing even his previous work in inventiveness, imagination, beauty and scope. 'A tour de force though the phrase seems hardly adequate to describe the novel's narrative velocity, polyphonic range, inventiveness, and bravery' New York Review of Books 'One of the giants of the post-Marquez era' Sunday Telegraph 'One of the greatest and most influential modern writers' James Wood