Juan Gabriel Vásquez – författare

When Gabriel Santoro publishes his first book, a biography of a Jewish family friend who fled Germany for Colombia shortly before World War Two, it never occurs to him that his father will write a devastating review in a national newspaper. Why does he attack him so viciously? Do the pages of his book unwittingly hide some dangerous secret? As Gabriel sets out to discover what lies behind his father's anger, he finds himself undertaking an examination of the guilt and complicity at the heart of Colombian society, as one treacherous act perpetrated in those dark days returns with a vengeance half a century later.

Shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2019"Like Don DeLillo's JFK-themed Libra, the novel is an intoxicating blend of fact and fiction" Glasgow Herald"A masterful writer" Nicole Krauss"Vasquez has succeeded García Márquez as the literary grandmaster of Colombia" Ariel Dorfman, New York Review of Books"A dazzlingly choreographed network of echoes and mirrorings" T.L.S.It takes the form of personal and formal investigations into two political assassinations - the murders of Rafael Uribe Uribe in 1914, the man who inspired García Márquez's General Buendia in One Hundred Years of Solitude, and of the charismatic Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, the man who might have been Colombia's J.F.K., gunned down on the brink of success in the presidential elections of 1948. Separated by more than 30 years, the two murders at first appear unconnected, but as the novel progresses Vásquez reveals how between them they contain the seeds of the violence that has bedevilled Colombia ever since. The Shape of the Ruins is Vásquez's most ambitious, challenging and rewarding novel to date. His previous novel, The Sound of Things Falling, won Spain's Alfaguara Prize, Italy's Von Rezzori Prize and the 2014 Dublin IMPAC literary Award. Winner of the Prémio Literário Casino da Póvoa 2018 Finalist for the Bienal de Novela Mario Vargas Llosa 2016 Finalist for the Premio Bottari Lattes Grinzane 2017 Finalist for the Prix Fémina Finalist for the Prix Médicis Translated from the Spanish by Anne McLean

Winner of the International IMPAC Dublin Literary AwardWinner of the Alfaguara PrizeWinner of the Gregor von Rezzori Prize'A powerful, humane novel about a man trying to make sense of a war he didn’t choose to fight' The Times'The story is compelling but through Vásquez’s 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 TimesNo sooner does he get to know Ricardo Laverde in a seedy billiard hall in Bogotá than Antonio Yammara realises that the ex-pilot has a secret. Antonio's fascination with his new friend's life grows until the day Ricardo receives a mysterious, unmarked cassette.Shortly afterwards, he is shot dead on a street corner.Yammara's investigation into what happened leads back to the early 1960s, marijuana smuggling and a time before the cocaine trade trapped Colombia in a living nightmare.

An extraordinarily rich and powerful collection of seven, thematically linked stories from the acclaimed prize-winning author of The Sound of Things Falling'The narrative escalates, the mystery deepens, and the scope of the story widens with each page ... Terrific' Khaled Hosseini, Books of the Year'One of the most original new writers of Latin American literature' Mario Vargas LlosaA Colombian writer is witness to a murder which will mark him forever. A woman sits alone in her house, waiting for her husband to return, while he lies in another woman’s bed twenty kilometres away. Through blood-soaked betrayal, a love affair, murder and long-meditated revenge, Vásquez achieves an extraordinary unity of emotion, morality and landscape with these fragmented lives.Achingly sad and beautifully crafted, The All Saints’ Day Lovers is a remarkable and intense collection of stories that explores the depths of relationships, loneliness and cruelty.

"Like Bolaño, Vásquez is a master stylist and a virtuoso of patient pacing and intricate structure" LEV GROSSMAN, Time Magazine"Juan Gabriel Vásquez . . . has succeeded García Márquez as the literary grandmaster of Colombia" ARIEL DORFMAN, New York Review of BooksA morally complex, searing set of stories by the award-winning author of The Sound of Things Falling and The Shape of the Ruins (shortlisted for the Booker International Prize 2019).A renowned photographer probes a traumatic incident in the life of a fellow guest at a countryside ranch. A chance meeting at a regimental reunion obliges a Korean War veteran to confront a shameful secret. And in the title story, an internet search for a book published in 1887 leads to the discovery of the life of a remarkable woman: Aurelia de Léon, who arrives in Colombia as a child orphan of the Great War, but as a free-spirited adult runs foul of her adoptive country's deep conservatism.The characters in Songs for the Flames are all men and women touched by violence - sometimes directly, sometimes tangentially - but the lives of all of them are irrevocably changed by the experience.Translated from the Spanish by Anne McLean

"One of the great novels to have been written in our language" MARIO VARGAS LLOSA"Beautifully written and gripping" GuardianHe thought that memories were invisible like light, and just as smoke made light show, there must be a way for memories to be seen...In October 2016, the real-life Colombian film director Sergio Cabrera is attending a retrospective of his films in Barcelona. It's a difficult time for him: his father, Fausto Cabrera, has just died; his marriage is in crisis; and his country has rejected peace agreements that might have ended more than fifty years of war.In the course of a few turbulent and intense days, Sergio will recall the events that marked the family's life, and especially his father's, his sister Marianella's and his own. From the Spanish Civil War to the exile of his republican family in Latin America, and from the Cultural Revolution in China to the guerrilla movements of 1960s Latin America, not only will do we discover a series of adventures extraordinary by any standards, but also a devastating portrait of the forces that for half a century turned the world upside down and created the one we now inhabit.Retrospective is a revelatory and unforgettable novel.Translated from the Spanish by Anne McLean

‘Splendid' Telegraph'Vivid, forceful, masterly' Guardian‘One of the most original new voices of Latin American literature' Mario Vargas LlosaLondon, 1903. Joseph Conrad is struggling with his new novel (‘I am placing it in South America in a Republic I call Costaguana'). Progress is slow and the great writer needs help from a native of the Caribbean coast of South America.José Altamirano, Colombian at birth, who has just arrived in London, answers the great writer's advertisement and tells him his life story. José has been witness to the most horrible things that a person or a country could suffer, and drags with him not just a guilty conscience but a story that has almost destroyed him.But when Nostromo is published the following year José is outraged by what he reads: ‘You've eliminated me from my own life. You, Joseph Conrad, have robbed me.' I waved the Weekly in the air again, and then threw it down on his desk. ‘Here,' I whispered, my back to the thief, ‘I do not exist.'The Secret History of Costaguana, the second novel by Juan Gabriel Vásquez to be published in English, is José Altamirano's riposte to Joseph Conrad. It is a big novel, tragic and despairing, comic and insightful by turns, told by a bumptious narrator with a score to settle. It is Latin America's post-modern answer to Europe's modernist vision. It is a superb, joyful, thoughtful and rumbustious novel that will establish Juan Gabriel Vásquez's reputation as one of the leading novelists of his generation.

A taut new novel by the award-winning author of The Sound of Things Falling – ‘one of the most original voices of Latin American literature’, Mario Vargas Llosa'An affecting, carefully paced work of psychological realism’ Times Literary SupplementAs Colombia’s famed political cartoonist, Javier Mallarino, strolls through downtown Bogotá before a public celebration of his career in the grand Teatro Colón, he contemplates the start of his professional life; how he set down his oils and took up a pen to begin drawing caricatures for a living. But the celebration has far-reaching consequences: as he leaves the theatre a figure from his past, now a young woman, emerges from the crowd and forces Mallarino to confront an incident that took place in his home half a lifetime ago, calling into question his reputation and the value of his life’s work.

A dazzling collection of stories by the winner of the Dublin Literary Award (IMPAC).