An Oasis of Horror in a Desert of Boredom

Literary Nonfiction. After Devouring 2666 by Roberto Bolaño on the New York City subway, Jonathan Russell Clark does what any good literary critic would do—he reads everything by Bolaño he can get his hands on. But the more he learns about the writer's unlikely life, the less it makes sense. Bolaño cultivated ambiguities and false identities, almost as if he were laying a trap for his future biographers. Clark's investigation into Bolaño's magnum opus is a stumble through a labyrinth where fiction and self-mythologizing converge. This book is part of a new series from Fiction Advocate called Afterwords.