The following version of this book was used to create the guide: Bolaño, Roberto. 2666. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, United States of America, 2008.

2666 is divided into five parts, each interconnected but focusing on different characters and storylines. Published posthumously, the five parts were originally intended to be individual novels each published a year a part but ultimately ended up condensed into one literary work.

Part 1: The Part About the Critics

The novel begins with four European academics: Jean-Claude Pelletier (French), Piero Morini (Italian), Manuel Espinoza (Spanish), and Liz Norton (English). They are united by their scholarly interest in the enigmatic German author Benno von Archimboldi. Over years of conferences and meetings, they form a close-knit group, with romantic entanglements developing between Norton and both Pelletier and Espinoza.

Their search for Archimboldi leads them to Santa Teresa, a fictional city in northern Mexico, where the author is rumored to be. In Santa Teresa, they encounter Professor Óscar Amalfitano and become peripherally aware of a series of brutal murders of women in the city. Unable to find Archimboldi, the group eventually disperses, with Norton ultimately choosing to be with Morini, who hadn't traveled to Mexico due to his disability.

Part 2: The Part About Amalfitano

This section focuses on Óscar Amalfitano, a Chilean professor living in Santa Teresa with his daughter, Rosa. Amalfitano's mental state deteriorates as he becomes increasingly paranoid about the dangers facing his daughter in the violent city. The narrative explores Amalfitano's past, including his ex-wife's departure and her eventual return years later to inform him she's dying of AIDS.

Part 3: The Part About Fate

Oscar Fate, an African American journalist, travels to Santa Teresa to cover a boxing match. While there, he becomes aware of the ongoing murders of women in the city. He meets Rosa Amalfitano and becomes involved with a group of locals, including a man named Chucho Flores. Fate attempts to investigate the murders but is ultimately forced to flee the city with Rosa when he becomes entangled in local violence.

Part 4: The Part About the Crimes

This harrowing section details the murders of women in Santa Teresa from 1993 to 1997. It alternates between clinical descriptions of discovered bodies and the lives of various characters in the city, including police officers, journalists, and activists trying to solve or bring attention to the crimes. Key figures include Detective Juan de Dios Martínez and his relationship with the asylum director Elvira Campos, and Klaus Haas, a German immigrant arrested as a suspect in the killings.

Part 5: The Part About Archimboldi

The final part reveals the history of Benno von Archimboldi, born as Hans Reiter in 1920 in Prussia. It traces his life from his unusual childhood, through his experiences in World War II, to his post-war transformation into the author Benno von Archimboldi.

As a soldier on the Eastern Front, Reiter discovers the diary of a Jewish-Ukrainian writer named Boris Ansky, which profoundly influences him. After the war, he kills a former Nazi official and begins writing under his new identity.

The narrative follows Archimboldi's development as a writer, his relationship with his publisher Mr. Bubis and Mrs. Bubis (who turns out to be a woman from his past), and his marriage to Ingeborg, who eventually dies of tuberculosis.

The section also covers the story of Archimboldi's sister, Lotte, and her son Klaus Haas - the same man arrested for the Santa Teresa murders. In 2001, the elderly Archimboldi learns of his nephew's situation and prepares to travel to Santa Teresa, presumably to help him.

The novel ends without resolving many of its central mysteries, including the identity of the Santa Teresa killer(s) and whether Archimboldi actually reaches the city. This open-endedness reflects Bolaño's complex view of history, violence, and human nature, suggesting that some questions may never have satisfactory answers.

2666 is notable for its sprawling narrative, which spans multiple continents and nearly a century of history. Bolaño's intricate plotting connects seemingly unrelated stories and characters, creating a rich tapestry that explores themes of violence, art, and the human condition. The novel's structure, with its five distinct but interconnected parts, allows Bolaño to approach his central themes from various angles, creating a multifaceted exploration of 20th-century history and the nature of evil.

The Santa Teresa murders, based on the real-life femicides in Ciudad Juárez, serve as a dark center around which the other narratives revolve. This focus on systemic violence against women provides a contemporary parallel to the historical atrocities explored in Archimboldi's storyline, suggesting a continuity of human cruelty across time and space.

Bolaño's prose style varies across the different sections, from the academic discussions of the critics to the matter-of-fact descriptions of crime scenes, reflecting the diverse perspectives and experiences of his characters. This stylistic variety contributes to the novel's expansive, all-encompassing feel, as if attempting to capture the complexity of an entire century within its pages.