Synopses & Reviews
* National Bestseller * Hailed by Edmund White as "a brilliant new novel" on the cover of the New York Times Book Review
* One of NPRs 6 Best Books of the Summer
* Esquire recommends The Sound of Things Falling if you read only one book this month”
* Starred early reviews from Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Library Journal, and Kirkus
* Lauded by Jonathan Franzen, E. L. Doctorow and many others
From a global literary star comes a prize-winning tour de force an intimate portrayal of the drug wars in Colombia.
Juan Gabriel Vásquez has been hailed not only as one of South Americas greatest literary stars, but also as one of the most acclaimed writers of his generation. In this gorgeously wrought, award-winning novel, Vásquez confronts the history of his home country, Colombia. In the city of Bogotá, Antonio Yammara reads an article about a hippo that had escaped from a derelict zoo once owned by legendary Colombian drug kingpin Pablo Escobar. The article transports Antonio back to when the war between Escobars Medellín cartel and government forces played out violently in Colombias streets and in the skies above. Back then, Antonio witnessed a friends murder, an event that haunts him still. As he investigates, he discovers the many ways in which his own life and his friends family have been shaped by his countrys recent violent past. His journey leads him all the way back to the 1960s and a world on the brink of change: a time before narco-trafficking trapped a whole generation in a living nightmare. Vásquez is one of the most original new voices of Latin American literature,” according to Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa, and The Sound of Things Falling is his most personal, most contemporary novel to date, a masterpiece that takes his writingand will take his literary stareven higher.
Review
"Remarkable...[
The Informers] is the best work of literary fiction to come my way since 2005...and into the bargain it is immensely entertaining, with twists and turns of plot that yield great satisfaction."
-Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post
"[A] straight-ahead, old-fashioned narrative... [T]he career of Juan Gabriel Vßsquez...is off to a notable start."
-The New York Times
"To read The Informers is to enjoy the shock of new talent... [Vßsquez's] novel is subtle, surprising and deeply pleasurable, with razors secreted among its pages."
-The Cleveland Plain Dealer
"Unlike anything written by his Latin American contemporaries...The Informers deserves to be read...[O]ne of this year's outstanding books."
-The Financial Times
Review
UK Praise for The Sound of Things Falling “Vásquez shows how the personal is linked to the political… The story is compelling but through Vásquezs vivid prose (rendered brilliantly into English by the award-winning translator Anne McLean) it also becomes haunting…. [A] poignant and perturbing tale about the inheritance of fear in a country scrabbling to regain its soul.” - Financial Times
“[C]ompelling, beautifully translated…. [E]lucidates with great acuity the complex relationship between memory and trauma… In this hugely affecting novel, it is the silent suffering that haunts the most…. Engrossing…. Vásquez holds his tightly crafted narrative together with admirable stylistic control as he shows a world falling apart and the redemptive powers of love and language to rebuild it.” - The Guardian
"The Sound of Things Falling, which won Spain's Alfaguara prize last year, focuses on the bewilderment and fear of a society corrupted and taken over by stealth. It confirms Vásquez's mastery of a sophisticated form of Latin American literary noir that leads the reader through Borgesian labyrinths. In navigating them, with guiding lights ranging from Conrad to Le Carré, his fiction also reveals the role of outsiders in a violent history…. [T]his novel affords a rare understanding of the inhuman costs on the other side.” - The Guardian
“Vasquez brings vividly to life that grey, isolated, landlocked city in the mountains where suspicion and fear ruled the streets for so many years.” - The Daily Mail (UK)
Praise for Juan Gabriel Vasquez
"From the opening paragraph of The Informers, I felt myself under the spell of a masterful writer. Juan Gabriel Vásquez has many gifts—intelligence, wit, energy, a deep vein of feeling—but he uses them so naturally that soon enough one forgets one's amazement at his talents, and then the strange, beautiful sorcery of his tale takes hold.”—Nicole Krauss
“Juan Gabriel Vásquez is one of the most original new voices of Latin American literature. His first novel, The Informers, a very powerful story about the shadowy years immediately following World War II, is testimony to the richness of his imagination as well as the subtlety and elegance of his prose.”—Mario Vargas Llosa
“What Vásquez offers us, with great narrative skill, is that grey area of human actions and awareness where our capacity to make mistakes, betray, and conceal creates a chain reaction which condemns us to a world without satisfaction. Friends and enemies, wives and lovers, parents and children mix and mingle angrily, silently, blindly, while the novelist uses irony and ellipsis to unmask his characters “self-protective strategies” and goes with them - not discovering them, simply accompanying them - as they come to understand that an unsatisfactory life can also be the life they inherit.”—Carlos Fuentes
“For anyone who has read the entire works of Gabriel García Márquez and is in search of a new Colombian novelist, then Juan Gabriel Vásquez's The Informers is a thrilling new discovery.”—Colm Tóibín
“A fine and frightening study of how the past preys upon the present, and an absorbing revelation of a little-known wing of the theatre of the Nazi war.”—John Banville
Praise for The Secret History of Costaguana
“An intricately detailed, audacious reframing of Nostromo, the classic 1904 Joseph Conrad tale of power, corruption, intrigue and revolution in a South American country he called Costaguana. The Secret History of Costaguana is a potent mixture of history, fiction and literary gamesmanship. Vásquez's themes are of the moment: powerful countries (the U.S. foremost among them) dabbling in Latin American politics, bribing politicians and journalists, trolling for profits; European writers appropriating history for their own tales. His particular triumph with this novel is to remind us, as Balzac put it, that novels can be ‘the private histories of nations.”—Los Angeles Times
“[An] exceptional new novel…When Mr. Vásquez, like Conrad, focuses on the individuals trapped in these national tragicomedies, he displays a keen emotional and moral awareness. The Secret History of Costaguana is a cunning tribute to a classic, but it also stands on its own merits as a dense and involving story about men who are either manipulating history or finding themselves at the barrel-end of it.” - Wall Street Journal
[A] post-modern literary revenge story.”—The New York Times
Praise for The Informers
"[A] remarkable novel. It deals with big universal themes... It is the best work of literary fiction to come my way since 2005…and into the bargain it is immensely entertaining, with twists and turns of plot that yield great satisfaction. - 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, no matter how dry or seemingly obscure, that others have overlooked. By that standard and several others, the career of Juan Gabriel Vásquez…is off to a notable start.…[A] straight-ahead, old-fashioned narrative… Two years ago Mr. Vásquez was included on a list of the most ‘important Latin American writers under 40, nominated by more than 2,000 authors, literary agents, librarians, editors and critics. The Informers alone justifies their choice, given its challenging subject and psychological depth, but clearly there are bigger and even more intriguing things on the way.”— Larry Rohter, The New York Times
“Chilling…The past is a shadow-bound, elusive creature in [The Informers]… When pursued it may flee, or, if cornered, it may unleash terrible truths.”—Los Angeles Times
“To read The Informers is to enjoy the shock of new talent… [Vásquezs] novel is subtle, surprising and deeply pleasurable, with razors secreted among its pages.” —The Cleveland Plain Dealer
“Compelling…The book combines a reflection on the delicate bonds of family, a journey through one of the few untold stories of World War II and even a look at the sometimes parasitic nature of the media… What sets The Informers, apart from other historical novels is Vasquez's questioning of his own role as muckraker and writer.”—San Francisco Chronicle
“Dramatic and surprising…” —Harpers Magazine
“Unlike anything written by his Latin American contemporaries. If there is any prevailing influence in this chilling work, it is in the late German writer, W.G. Sebald…The Informers deserves to be read…[O]ne of this years outstanding books.”—The Financial Times
“Masterful…Vásquez has much in common with Roberto Bolaño…. But unlike Bolaños stolid, serviceable prose, Vásquezs style is musical, occasionally even lush, and its poeticism remains unmuddled in McLeans translation.” —Bookforum
Review
UK Praise for The Sound of Things Falling “Vásquez shows how the personal is linked to the political… The story is compelling but through Vásquezs vivid prose (rendered brilliantly into English by the award-winning translator Anne McLean) it also becomes haunting…. [A] poignant and perturbing tale about the inheritance of fear in a country scrabbling to regain its soul.” - Financial Times
“[C]ompelling, beautifully translated…. [E]lucidates with great acuity the complex relationship between memory and trauma… In this hugely affecting novel, it is the silent suffering that haunts the most…. Engrossing…. Vásquez holds his tightly crafted narrative together with admirable stylistic control as he shows a world falling apart and the redemptive powers of love and language to rebuild it.” - The Guardian
"The Sound of Things Falling, which won Spain's Alfaguara prize last year, focuses on the bewilderment and fear of a society corrupted and taken over by stealth. It confirms Vásquez's mastery of a sophisticated form of Latin American literary noir that leads the reader through Borgesian labyrinths. In navigating them, with guiding lights ranging from Conrad to Le Carré, his fiction also reveals the role of outsiders in a violent history…. [T]his novel affords a rare understanding of the inhuman costs on the other side.” - The Guardian
“Vasquez brings vividly to life that grey, isolated, landlocked city in the mountains where suspicion and fear ruled the streets for so many years.” - The Daily Mail (UK)
Praise for Juan Gabriel Vasquez
"From the opening paragraph of The Informers, I felt myself under the spell of a masterful writer. Juan Gabriel Vásquez has many gifts—intelligence, wit, energy, a deep vein of feeling—but he uses them so naturally that soon enough one forgets one's amazement at his talents, and then the strange, beautiful sorcery of his tale takes hold.”—Nicole Krauss
“Juan Gabriel Vásquez is one of the most original new voices of Latin American literature. His first novel, The Informers, a very powerful story about the shadowy years immediately following World War II, is testimony to the richness of his imagination as well as the subtlety and elegance of his prose.”—Mario Vargas Llosa
“What Vásquez offers us, with great narrative skill, is that grey area of human actions and awareness where our capacity to make mistakes, betray, and conceal creates a chain reaction which condemns us to a world without satisfaction. Friends and enemies, wives and lovers, parents and children mix and mingle angrily, silently, blindly, while the novelist uses irony and ellipsis to unmask his characters “self-protective strategies” and goes with them - not discovering them, simply accompanying them - as they come to understand that an unsatisfactory life can also be the life they inherit.”—Carlos Fuentes
“For anyone who has read the entire works of Gabriel García Márquez and is in search of a new Colombian novelist, then Juan Gabriel Vásquez's The Informers is a thrilling new discovery.”—Colm Tóibín
“A fine and frightening study of how the past preys upon the present, and an absorbing revelation of a little-known wing of the theatre of the Nazi war.”—John Banville
Praise for The Secret History of Costaguana
“An intricately detailed, audacious reframing of Nostromo, the classic 1904 Joseph Conrad tale of power, corruption, intrigue and revolution in a South American country he called Costaguana. The Secret History of Costaguana is a potent mixture of history, fiction and literary gamesmanship. Vásquez's themes are of the moment: powerful countries (the U.S. foremost among them) dabbling in Latin American politics, bribing politicians and journalists, trolling for profits; European writers appropriating history for their own tales. His particular triumph with this novel is to remind us, as Balzac put it, that novels can be ‘the private histories of nations.”—Los Angeles Times
“[An] exceptional new novel…When Mr. Vásquez, like Conrad, focuses on the individuals trapped in these national tragicomedies, he displays a keen emotional and moral awareness. The Secret History of Costaguana is a cunning tribute to a classic, but it also stands on its own merits as a dense and involving story about men who are either manipulating history or finding themselves at the barrel-end of it.” - Wall Street Journal
[A] post-modern literary revenge story.”—The New York Times
Praise for The Informers
"[A] remarkable novel. It deals with big universal themes... It is the best work of literary fiction to come my way since 2005…and into the bargain it is immensely entertaining, with twists and turns of plot that yield great satisfaction. - 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, no matter how dry or seemingly obscure, that others have overlooked. By that standard and several others, the career of Juan Gabriel Vásquez…is off to a notable start.…[A] straight-ahead, old-fashioned narrative… Two years ago Mr. Vásquez was included on a list of the most ‘important Latin American writers under 40, nominated by more than 2,000 authors, literary agents, librarians, editors and critics. The Informers alone justifies their choice, given its challenging subject and psychological depth, but clearly there are bigger and even more intriguing things on the way.”— Larry Rohter, The New York Times
“Chilling…The past is a shadow-bound, elusive creature in [The Informers]… When pursued it may flee, or, if cornered, it may unleash terrible truths.”—Los Angeles Times
“To read The Informers is to enjoy the shock of new talent… [Vásquezs] novel is subtle, surprising and deeply pleasurable, with razors secreted among its pages.” —The Cleveland Plain Dealer
“Compelling…The book combines a reflection on the delicate bonds of family, a journey through one of the few untold stories of World War II and even a look at the sometimes parasitic nature of the media… What sets The Informers, apart from other historical novels is Vasquez's questioning of his own role as muckraker and writer.”—San Francisco Chronicle
“Dramatic and surprising…” —Harpers Magazine
“Unlike anything written by his Latin American contemporaries. If there is any prevailing influence in this chilling work, it is in the late German writer, W.G. Sebald…The Informers deserves to be read…[O]ne of this years outstanding books.”—The Financial Times
“Masterful…Vásquez has much in common with Roberto Bolaño…. But unlike Bolaños stolid, serviceable prose, Vásquezs style is musical, occasionally even lush, and its poeticism remains unmuddled in McLeans translation.” —Bookforum
Review
Praise for The Sound of Things Falling
“[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
Review
"The Informers is a dramatic and surprising novel featuring an array of eccentric characters, but its central premise is implausible. It would be easy enough to believe that the pompous Gabriel Santoro Sr. had committed any number of indiscretions -- sexual, political, financial — but one cannot believe both that he is a great rhetorician and that his implosion would come thanks to such a calculated public outburst, which could only draw attention to the past he had invested so many years in burying." Benjamin Moser, Harper's Magazine (Read the entire )
Synopsis
A virtuosic novel about family, history, memory, and betrayal from the brightest new Latin American literary talent working today.
When Gabriel Santoro's biography is scathingly reviewed by his own father, a public intellectual and famous Bogotá rhetorician, Gabriel could not imagine what had pierced his icy exterior to provoke such a painful reaction. A volume that catalogs the life of Sara Guterman, a longtime family friend and Jewish immigrant, since her arrival in Colombia in the 1930s, A Life in Exile seemed a slim, innocent exercise in recording modern history. But as a devastated Gabriel delves, yet again, into Sara's story, searching for clues to his father's anger, he cannot yet see the sinister secret buried in his research that could destroy his father's exalted reputation and redefine his own.
After his father's mysterious death in a car accident a few years later, Gabriel sets out anew to navigate half a century of half-truths and hidden meanings. With the help of Sara Guterman and his father's young girlfriend, Angelina, layer after shocking layer of Gabriel's world falls away and a complex portrait of his father emerges from the ruins. From the streets of 1940s Bogotá to a stranger's doorstep in 1990s Medellin, he unravels the web of doubt, betrayal, and guilt at the core of his father's life and he wades into a dark, long-silenced period of Colombian history after World War II.
With a taut, riveting narrative and achingly beautiful prose, Juan Gabriel Vásquez delivers an expansive, powerful exploration of the sins of our fathers, of war's devastating psychological costs, and of the inescapability of the past. A novel that has earned Vásquez comparisons to Sebald, Borges, Roth, and Márquez, The Informers heralds the arrival of a major literary talent.
Synopsis
The first novel from a global literary superstar and author of The Sound of Things Falling. Juan Gabriel V squez's The Informers is a thrilling new discovery." --Colm T ib n
One of the most original new voices of Latin American literature. -- Mario Vargas Llosa, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature
When Gabriel Santoro's book is scathingly reviewed by his own father, a famous Bogot rhetorician, Gabriel is devastated. Cataloguing the life of longtime family friend Sara Guterman, a Jewish German immigrant who escaped to Colombia during the 1930s, Gabriel's book seemed an innocent attempt to preserve a piece of his country's rapidly vanishing past. But as Gabriel pours over his research looking for clues to his father's anger, he discovers a sinister secret locked in the pages. After his father's death, and with the help of Sara Guterman and his father's girlfriend, Angelina, Gabriel peels back layer after shocking layer of family history-from the streets of 1940s Bogot to a stranger's doorstep in 1990s Medell n-to reveal a hidden portrait of their past-dark, complex, and inescapable.
Synopsis
When Gabriel Santoro's book is scathingly reviewed by his own father, a famous Bogotá rhetorician, Gabriel is devastated. Cataloging the life of longtime family friend Sara Guterman, a Jewish German immigrant who escaped to Colombia during the 1930s, Gabriel's book seemed an innocent attempt to preserve a piece of his country's rapidly vanishing past. But as Gabriel pours over his research looking for clues to his father's anger, he discovers a sinister secret locked in the pages. After his father's death, and with the help of Sara Guterman and his father's girlfriend, Angelina, Gabriel peels back layer after shocking layer of family history — from the streets of 1940s Bogotá to a stranger's doorstep in 1990s Medellin — to reveal a hidden portrait of their past-dark, complex, and inescapable.
Synopsis
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
When Gabriel Santoro's book is scathingly reviewed by his own father, a famous Bogotá rhetorician, Gabriel is devastated. Cataloguing the life of longtime family friend Sara Guterman, a Jewish German immigrant who escaped to Colombia during the 1930s, Gabriel's book seemed an innocent attempt to preserve a piece of his country's rapidly vanishing past. But as Gabriel pours over his research looking for clues to his father's anger, he discovers a sinister secret locked in the pages. After his father's death, and with the help of Sara Guterman and his father's girlfriend, Angelina, Gabriel peels back layer after shocking layer of family history-from the streets of 1940s Bogotá to a stranger's doorstep in 1990s Medellín-to reveal a hidden portrait of their past-dark, complex, and inescapable.
Juan Gabriel Vásquez has been hailed as one of the leading writers of his generation, compared to Borges, John Le Carre, Joseph Conrad and W. G. Sebald.
Synopsis
Juan Gabriel Vásquez has been hailed not only as one of South America’s greatest literary stars, but also as one of the most acclaimed writers of his generation. In this gorgeously wrought, award-winning novel, Vásquez confronts the history of his home country, Colombia. In the city of Bogotá, Antonio Yammara reads an article about a hippo that had escaped from a derelict zoo once owned by legendary Colombian drug kingpin Pablo Escobar. The article transports Antonio back to when the war between Escobar’s Medellín cartel and government forces played out violently in Colombia’s streets and in the skies above. Back then, Antonio witnessed a friend’s murder, an event that haunts him still. As he investigates, he discovers the many ways in which his own life and his friend’s family have been shaped by his country’s recent violent past. His journey leads him all the way back to the 1960s and a world on the brink of change: a time before narco-trafficking trapped a whole generation in a living nightmare. Vásquez is “one of the most original new voices of Latin American literature,” according to Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa, and The Sound of Things Falling is his most personal, most contemporary novel to date, a masterpiece that takes his writing—and will take his literary star—even higher.
Synopsis
From the award-winning, bestselling author of The Sound of Things Falling, a brilliant collection of stories that showcases why he is one of the best writersin any languageworking 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.
About the Author
Juan Gabriel Vásquez is a critically acclaimed Colombian writer, translator, and award-winning author of a collection of stories Los amantes de Todos los Santos, as well as the novels Historia secreta de Costaguana and The Informers, which has been translated into seven languages. He has translated works by Victor Hugo, E.M Foster and John Hersey, among others, his essay “El arte de la distorsión” won the Premio Nacional Simón Bolívar, and he is a regular columnist for El Espectador, the newspaper of dissent in Bogotá. Educated in Colombia, and in Paris at the Sorbonne, he now lives and teaches in Barcelona, Spain with his wife and twin daughters.