The epic novel that defined one of Latin America's greatest writers and his unique vision of the 20th century.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...Conceived on an astonishing scale, and - in the last years of Roberto Bolano's life - with burning, visionary commitment, 2666 has been greeted around the world as his masterpiece, surpassing even his previous work in inventiveness, imagination, beauty and scope.