The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano

A sprawling, beguiling, Borgesian exercise in literary history and narrative focus.  Two poets, leaders of the so-called "visceral poetry" movement in Mexicon, dart in and out of a 600 page novel that features many dozens of "interview" with other poets and people whose lives intersected with the two poets.

Challenging!

everything began to tangle in my head, as if the words I had to say were plants and all of a sudden they began to wither, fade, and die.

when I was in high school we had a teacher who claimed to know exactly what he would do if World War III broke out: go back to his hometown, because nothing ever happened there, probably a joke, I don't know, but in a way he was right, when the whole civilized world disappears Mexico will keep existing, when the planet vaporizes or disintegrates, Mexico will still be Mexico.

... I could peel my hands off that glass of that old mirror (noticing, all the same, how my fingerprints lingered like ten tiny face speaking in unison and so quickly that I couldn't make out their words).