The Forensic Fiction of Roberto Bolaño’s 2666

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe main event of Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 is a feminicide in Santa Teresa, a fictionalized version of Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. In this essay I show how Bolaño approaches this event in a forensic way, not only in terms of content but also in its compositional and stylistic dimensions. The result is a blurring of fact and fiction, and in this very blurring the novel moves beyond an ethical paradigm of trauma and testimony and toward a political project of the twenty-first century.