Sparrow is a fine stylist, with a sure sense of pacing, eloquence to spare, and a self-deprecating voice that suits Killing perfectly. Moving along a continuum, he becomes a roo shooter’s assistant for a day, then tours an abattoir, before turning to the killing of humans. How does a human being come at the task of killing others and what is the impact later? Skilfully meshing research reading into investigative journalism, Sparrow interviews executioners, death row wardens, experts on killing, Iraqi vets, and others, all the time plagued by nightmares and uncertain of his assignment. His insights into the industrialization and hiding of killing, into post-killing psychic damage, into human psychology, are hard won and tentative, but it was the journey that taught me most. I didn’t come away from this profound book with any new magical ‘recipes’ to reduce violence and prevent genocide, but I was most moved by the horrible depths Jeff Sparrow went to to illuminate the darkest of subjects. As he puts it in the middle of Killing: ‘When you stared into the abyss, sometimes the abyss stared back at you.’

2666 comprises five interlinked parts: four geeky academics seek the subject of their scholarship, the obscure and reclusive writer Benno von Archimboldi; a Mexican philosophy professor disintegrates; a New York journalist comes to Santa Teresa (an imagined Mexican city) to cover a boxing event; Santa Teresa detectives spend years trying to catch a killer of hundreds of women; and a World War II refugee travels far. I’ve deliberately been coy about the plot elements, for each of the five parts is in fact overwhelmingly complex, packed with characters and connections and places and ideas. Bolano never hesitates to dart sideways for long digressions, never makes any concession to the minds of his readers. Such is his consummate skill that the reader relishes every new twist, every new layer.

Bolano fuses many different styles, incorporating at different times noir, magic realism, post-modern complexity, satire . . . you name it, it crops up. Yet all is seamless and the whole makes up the wonder of Roberto Bolano. Every page is dense with marvellously concrete description, allusions, rawness and lyricism. Sometimes when I completed a page, I’d sit back and nearly cry: how did he do it?

Ask any two readers of 2666 and you’ll get different verdicts on the best of the five sections. For my money, the short third section is the one that has stayed with me – the growing dread evoked is seemingly permanent. But no, what about the gorgeous yet respectful skewering of the randy geeks in the first section? And who can forget the Santa Teresa detectives, dealing with a horror too great to bear? And . . . and so on. All I can say is: if you wish to read one masterpiece by a truly remarkable novelist this year, grab 2666.

Interviewing family (but not delving intrusively on Politskovskaya’s emotional life), editors, journalists and personalities (exiled magnate Boris Berezovsky and ex-chess champion Garry Kasparov), Bergkraut skilfully dissects the murder and journalistic history. But Bergkraut’s most valuable asset is hours of unused Politskovskaya interview material from an earlier documentary. We see the dignified, gritty, seemingly unfazed investigator muse about her own death (which she could well confront, having escaped poisoning a couple of years earlier), essentially predicting it and being quite prepared for it. Anna Politskovskaya is one of those rare human beings who makes one feel timid yet offers a role model for a more courageous way forward.

Letter to Anna is essential viewing for Russian current affairs fans and researchers of the human soul.

• Anders Østergaard’s Burma VJ captures, courtesy of anonymous citizens with handy cams, the 2007 uprising in totalitarian Myanmar. It’s spellbinding, well structured, and a tribute to the spirit of mankind. 4 stars.
• Rem Koolhaas: A Kind of Architect, made by Markus Heidingsfelder, is a doco about a controversial architect. Although some of it is most interesting, the structure mirrors the language of architecture, that is, almost indecipherable. Presumably if you’re a student of architecture this would fascinate, otherwise, like me, it could bore. 2 stars.
• Eric Bergkraut’s tribute to Anna Politkovskaya, the investigative Russian journalist assassinated in 2006, Letter to Anna, is exquisitely rendered and heartbreaking. 4 stars.

If this bind seems familiar, check out Joe Lauria’s Wall Street Journal July 30 article: ‘U.S. Backs Implementing U.N. Doctrine Against Genocide.’ Apparently the Responsibility to Protect doctrine, endorsed by the United Nations in 2005, aims to kick in only upon genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, or crimes against humanity, so the cutoff is appropriate. (Mind you, that hasn’t stopped Russia trying to bolster actions in Georgia and Chechnya on just such grounds – interpretation will always be made partly politically.) I gather this doctrine is non-binding, so it could be labelled as a feel-good piece of paper destined never to be used appropriately, but it surely seems to me a tiny step forward.

• Sergio, Greg Barker’s documentary on Sergio De Mello, the high-profile UN envoy who died in a Iraqi suicide bombing in 2003, is a work of consummate filmmaking. The close-up interviews of the participants who tried to save Sergio’s life (as the movie points out, this man was always known by his first man) remind me of Errol Morris. As a loving portrait of a genuinely good man, Sergio is inspirational but not cloying. 4½ stars.
• Bulgarian Kamen Kalev’s existentially driven drama Eastern Plays about a self-destructive skinhead and his older brother, a recovering addict and artist, is full of conceptual and character promise. But, reminiscent of Samson & Delilah, the plot is all over the place and the ending limps into place. 1½ stars.
• I didn’t read David Peace’s kinetic Red Riding quartet, based on the Yorkshire Ripper murders, more fool me. Of course that means I shouldn’t see the three movies released this year, directed by three different filmmakers, until I do the required reading (always read the book first!), but I couldn’t resist. Red Riding: 1974, made by Julian Jarrold, is a fine start: moody, savage, blessed with plot elements that clink into place with natural ease. I was amused to find subtitles. 3½ stars.

My first film was My Neighbor, My Killer, a documentary examination of how Rwanda’s Gacaca courts, government-organized open-air community tribunals bringing genocidaires and their victims together, work in practice. Anne Aghion, the filmmaker, is never heard. Instead, the camera follows four years of Gacaca in one remote village, focusing on a handful of women whose children had been ripped away and macheted to death. Not an easy film because so much is left unexplained, it’s nonetheless a rare look at victim and killer. Four stars.