Roberto Bolaño · 2004 · global

Roberto Bolaño's sprawling 2004 novel gathers a set of far-flung lives, four European critics, an American journalist, and an elusive German writer, and draws them all toward Santa Teresa, a Mexican border city haunted by an epidemic of murder. The route traces that convergence from Europe and New York to the Sonoran desert.

1. 1
   Prussia

   In a village in Prussia is born Hans Reiter, who will vanish into the pen name Archimboldi, the reclusive author every thread of this book is chasing.

2. 2
   London

   In London, Paris, Madrid, and Turin, four literary critics bond over a shared obsession with Archimboldi and set out to find the man himself.

3. 3
   Paris

   Their friendship, and their rivalry in love, follows them from conference to conference across a comfortable, bookish Europe.

4. 4
   Madrid

   A rumour surfaces that the vanished writer has been seen in northern Mexico, and the critics resolve to follow it to the end of the earth.

5. 5
   New York

   In New York a journalist called Oscar Fate is sent south to cover a prizefight, and finds himself pulled instead toward a city of killings.

6. 6
   Santa Teresa

   All roads end at Santa Teresa on the Sonoran border, a city of maquiladoras and desert where hundreds of women are murdered, the black sun around which the whole novel turns.