It consists of interviews with a variety of characters from locations around North America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, all of whom have come into contact with the founding leaders of the Visceral Realists, Ulises Lima and Arturo Belano.

Lima, the more introverted of the two, serves a short sentence in an Israeli prison, while Belano challenges a literary critic to an absurd sword fight on a Spanish beach.

The section involves the "Savage Detectives" closing in on Cesárea Tinajero, an elusive poet who is the founder of Visceral Realism, while they are chased by a pimp named Alberto and a corrupt Mexican police officer.

Several critics have compared the novel to Rayuela (translated into English as Hopscotch) by Argentinian novelist Julio Cortázar, whom Bolaño greatly respected, both because of its non-linear structure and its portrayal of young, bohemian artists.

[7] James Wood wrote in The New York Times, "A novel all about poetry and poets, one of whose heroes is a lightly disguised version of the author himself: how easily this could be nothing more than a precious lattice of ludic narcissism and unbearably "literary" adventures...

And yet, in spite of the book’s apparent (and often real) formlessness, a large part of its distinction is its virtually unprecedented achievement in multiply-voiced narration.