Roberto Bolaño

Bolaño grew up in Chile and Mexico City, co-founding the Infrarealist poetry movement with fellow young poets who crashed literary readings to heckle the establishment. He returned briefly to Chile in 1973, was arrested during Pinochet's coup, and was released, by his own later account, when former schoolmates recognized him among the guards.

He settled on Spain's Catalan coast, working as a dishwasher, campground night watchman, and dockhand while raising a family in near-poverty. Diagnosed in the 1990s with a fatal liver disease, he turned decisively from poetry to fiction to leave his children something to live on, writing at tremendous speed.

The Savage Detectives made him famous in 1998; he died in 2003, at fifty, before finishing 2666, which appeared posthumously to acclaim across a world he'd barely lived to see.