Secret History of Costaguana

From the author of The Sound of Things Falling, a "brilliant new novel" (New York Times Book Review) and one of the most buzzed about books of the year!

"One of the most original new voices of Latin American literature." -- Mario Vargas Llosa, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature

“Unlike anything written by his Latin American contemporaries” (The Financial Times) The Informers secured Juan Gabriel Vásquezs place as one of the most original and exuberantly talented novelist working today. Now he returns with an ingenious new novel of historical invention.

On the day of Joseph Conrad's death in 1924, the Colombian-born José Altamirano begins to write and cannot stop. Many years before, he confessed to Conrad his life's every delicious detail—from his country's heroic revolutions to his darkest solitary moments. Those intimate recollections became Nostromo, a novel that solidified Conrads fame and turned Altamiranos reality into a work of fiction. Now Conrad is dead, but the slate is by no means clear—Nostromo will live on and Altamirano must write himself back into existence.

As the destinies of real empires collide with the murky realities of imagined ones, Vásquez takes us from a flourishing twentieth-century London to the lawless fury of a blooming Panama and back in a labyrinthine quest to reclaim the past—of both a country and a man.

“[A] post-modern literary revenge story.”—The New York Times

“Ambitious…To read this novel is to enter a Borgesian rabbit hole—it’s a fiction that purports to tell the truth obscured by another fiction—yet its strangeness helps make it both brave and engaging.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Audacious…a potent mixture of history, fiction and literary gamesmanship.” — Los Angeles Times

“An exceptional new novel.” —The Wall Street Journal 

Praise for Juan Gabriel Vásquez

“One of the most original new voices of Latin American literature."— Mario Vargas Llosa, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature

“Remarkable . . . Immensely entertaining . . . The best work of literary fiction to come my way since 2005.”—Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post

“One hallmark of a gifted novelist is the ability to see the potential for compelling fiction in an incident, anecdote or scrap of history. . . . By that standard and several others, the career of Juan Gabriel Vásquez . . . is off to a notable start.”—Larry Rohter, The New York Times

“[A] brilliant new novel . . . gripping . . . absorbing right to the end. The Sound of Things Falling may be a page-turner, but its also a deep meditation on fate and death.” —Edmund White, The New York Times Book Review

“Deeply affecting and closely observed.” —Héctor Tobar, Los Angeles Times

“Like Bolaño, [Vásquez] is a master stylist and a virtuoso of patient pacing and intricate structure.” —Lev Grossman, Time magazine

In the early twentieth century, a struggling Joseph Conrad wrote his great novel Nostromo, about a South American republic he named Costaguana. It was inspired by the geography and history of Colombia, where Conrad spent only a few days. But in Juan Gabriel Vásquez's novel The Secret History of Costaguana, we uncover the hidden source- and one of the great literary thefts.

On the day of Joseph Conrad's death in 1924, the Colombian-born José Altamirano begins to write and cannot stop. Many years before, he confessed to Conrad his life's every delicious detail-from his country's heroic revolutions to his darkest solitary moments. Conrad stole them all. Now Conrad is dead, but the slate is by no means clear- Nostromo will live on and Altamirano must write himself back into existence. As the destinies of real empires collide with the murky realities of imagined ones, Vásquez takes us from a flourishing twentieth-century London to the lawless fury of a blooming Panama and back.

Tragic and despairing, comic and insightful, The Secret History of Costaguana is a masterpiece of historical invention. It will secure Juan Gabriel Vásquez's place among the most original and exuberantly talented novelists working today.

Lovers on All Saints' Day is an emotional book that haunts, moves, and seduces. Juan Gabriel Vásquez, the brilliant novelist, now brings his keen eye and rich prose to the themes of love and memory in these seven powerful stories.

Vásquez achieves an extraordinary unity of emotion with these fragmented lives. A Colombian writer is witness to a murder that will mark him forever. A woman sits alone in her house, waiting for her husband to return from an expedition to find wood for their stove, while he lies in another womans bed a few miles away, unable to heal the wound in his own marriage. In these stories, there are love affairs, revenge, troubled pasts, and tender moments that reveal a persons whole history in a few sentences.

Set in Europe (the scene of Vásquezs own self-imposed exile from Latin America) and never before available in English, this collection evokes a singular mood and a tone, and showcase Vásquezs hypnotic writing. Vásquez is a humane, deeply insightful writer, and these stories leave one feeling transformed from the experience of reading them, with a greater vision of humanity and society, a greater understanding of relationships and of love.