The Secret, the Evil an the Fear. Detective Story Genre Revamped in Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 Cover Image

El secreto, el mal y el miedo. El género criminal rehecho en 2666 de Roberto Bolaño
The Secret, the Evil an the Fear. Detective Story Genre Revamped in Roberto Bolaño’s 2666

Author(s): Nina Pluta
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego
Keywords: Postmodern fiction; Spanish-American fiction; detective genre; the evil

Summary/Abstract: Roberto Bolaño, a Chilean author who passed away in 2003, tackles the problem of evil using a criminal convention which underwent profound changes in the second half of the 20th century. One of its most popular types nowadays is the metaphysical detective story, in which the investigation is complicated by various cognitive riddles reflecting the Postmodernist intellectual disputes. Bolaño’s last novel — which is the subject of this article — is titled 2666 and was published in 2004. It is a metaphysical detective story set in Northern Mexico which focuses on the country’s current social problems. In the novel, crime and evil are not a metaphor for the human intellectual cognition, as they are tightly connected with the political injustice that main characters experience on a day to day basis.

  • Issue Year: 2010
  • Issue No: 5
  • Page Range: 147-161
  • Page Count: 15
  • Language: Spanish