The Sound of Things Falling

Author: Juan Gabriel Vasquez
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101605383
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 217

Book Description
* National Bestseller and winner of the 2014 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award * Hailed by Edmund White as "a brilliant new novel" on the cover of the New York Times Book Review * 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 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.

The Sound of Things Falling

Author: Juan Gabriel Vásquez
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408831619
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 322

Book Description
Winner of the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 2014 Winner of the Alfaguara Prize 2011 Winner of the Gregor von Rezzori Prize 2013 No sooner does he get to know Ricardo Laverde in a seedy billiard hall in Bogot� 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.

The Sound of Things Falling

Author: Juan Gabriel Vásquez
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 140883412X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 322

Book Description
Winner of the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award Winner of the Alfaguara Prize Winner 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 Times No 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.

The Shape of the Ruins

Author: Juan Gabriel Vasquez
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0735211167
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 482

Book Description
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2019 MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE A sweeping tale of conspiracy theories, assassinations, and twisted obsessions -- the much anticipated masterpiece from Juan Gabriel Vásquez. The Shape of the Ruins is a masterly story of conspiracy, political obsession, and literary investigation. When a man is arrested at a museum for attempting to steal the bullet-ridden suit of a murdered Colombian politician, few notice. But soon this thwarted theft takes on greater meaning as it becomes a thread in a widening web of popular fixations with conspiracy theories, assassinations, and historical secrets; and it haunts those who feel that only they know the real truth behind these killings. This novel explores the darkest moments of a country's past and brings to life the ways in which past violence shapes our present lives. A compulsive read, beautiful and profound, eerily relevant to our times and deeply personal, The Shape of the Ruins is a tour-de-force story by a master at uncovering the incisive wounds of our memories.

Songs for the Flames

Author: Juan Gabriel Vasquez
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0593190149
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Book Description
A new collection of electric, searing stories from award-winning, bestselling author Juan Gabriel Vásquez. The characters in Songs for the Flames are men and women touched by violence—sometimes directly, sometimes only in passing—but whose lives are changed forever, consumed by fire and by unexpected encounters and unyielding forces. A photographer becomes obsessed with the traumatic past that an elegant woman, a fellow guest staying at a countryside ranch, would rather leave behind. A military reunion forces a soldier to confront a troubling history, both personal and on a larger scale. And in a tour-de-force piece, the search for a book leads a writer to the fascinating story of why a woman is buried next to a graveyard, rather than in it—and the remarkable account of her journey from France to Colombia as a child orphan. Juan Gabriel Vásquez returns to stories with these nine morally complex tales, fresh proof of his narrative versatility and his profound understanding of the lives of others. There’s a romantic wistfulness that combusts with the realities of dangerous histories, both personal and political, to throw these characters into the flames from which they either emerge purified, reborn, or burned and destroyed.

Reputations

Author: Juan Gabriel Vasquez
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0698179048
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 141

Book Description
From the author of The Sound of Things Falling, a powerful novel about a legendary political cartoonist. Javier Mallarino is a living legend. He is his country’s most influential political cartoonist, the conscience of a nation. A man capable of repealing laws, overturning judges’ decisions, and destroying politicians’ careers with his art. His weapons are pen and ink. Those in power fear him and pay him homage. After four decades of a brilliant career, he’s at the height of his powers. But this all changes when he’s paid an unexpected visit by a young woman who upends his personal history and forces him to reconsider his life and work, questioning his position in the world. In Reputations, Juan Gabriel Vásquez examines the weight of the past, how a public persona intersects with private histories, the burdens and surprises of memory. In this intimate novel, Vásquez once again brilliantly plumbs universal experiences to create a masterly story, one that reverberates long after you turn the final page.

The Informers

Author: Juan Gabriel Vásquez
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408834537
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 329

Book Description
A brilliant debut from 'one of the most original new voices of Latin American literature' (Mario Vargas Llosa) 'For anyone who has read the entire works of Gabriel García Márquez, The Informers is a thrilling new discovery' Colm Toibin, Guardian 'One of this year's outstanding books' Financial Times 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.

Falling Man

Author: Don DeLillo
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1416562079
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 265

Book Description
There is September 11 and then there are the days after, and finally the years. Falling Man is a magnificent, essential novel about the event that defines turn-of-the-century America. It begins in the smoke and ash of the burning towers and tracks the aftermath of this global tremor in the intimate lives of a few people. First there is Keith, walking out of the rubble into a life that he'd always imagined belonged to everyone but him. Then Lianne, his es-tranged wife, memory-haunted, trying to reconcile two versions of the same shadowy man. And their small son Justin, standing at the window, scanning the sky for more planes. These are lives choreographed by loss, grief and the enormous force of history. Brave and brilliant, Falling Man traces the way the events of September 11 have reconfigured our emotional landscape, our memory and our perception of the world. It is cathartic, beautiful, heartbreaking.

The Speed of Falling Objects

Author: Nancy Richardson Fischer
Publisher: Harlequin
ISBN: 1488051348
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 384

Book Description
From the author of When Elephants Fly comes an exceptional new novel about falling down, risking everything and embracing what makes us unique. Don’t miss this compulsively readable novel about the most unlikely of heroes. Danger “Danny” Danielle Warren is no stranger to falling. After losing an eye in a childhood accident, she had to relearn her perception of movement and space. Now Danny keeps her head down, studies hard, and works to fulfill everyone else’s needs. She's certain that her mom’s bitterness and her TV star father’s absence are her fault. If only she were more—more athletic, charismatic, attractive—life would be perfect. When her dad calls with an offer to join him to film the next episode of his popular survivalist show, Danny jumps at the chance to prove she’s not the disappointment he left behind. Being on set with the hottest teen movie idol of the moment, Gus Price, should be the cherry on top. But when their small plane crashes in the Amazon, and a terrible secret is revealed, Danny must face the truth about the parent she worships and falling for Gus, and find her own inner strength and worth to light the way home.

The Secret History of Costaguana

Author: Juan Gabriel Vasquez
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101535245
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 220

Book Description
"A potent mixture of history, fiction and literary gamesmanship." —Los Angeles Times "A cunning tribute to a classic." —Wall Street Journal "[A] post-modern literary revenge story.” —The New York Times An ingenious novel of historical invention from the global literary star author of The Sound of Things Falling. 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 Conrad’s fame and turned Altamirano’s 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.