TRANSLATOR’S NOTE
I would like to thank Bill Swainson for his unerring eye and ear, his encouragement, patience and inspiration during the translation of this and quite a few other books over the last decade and a half.
AM
A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR
Juan Gabriel Vásquez was born in Bogotá in 1973. He studied Latin American literature at the Sorbonne, and has translated works by E. M. Forster and Victor Hugo, amongst others, into Spanish. His previous books have won the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the Alfaguara Prize, the Gregor von Rezzori Prize, the Prix Roger Caillois and he has been shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. Reputations was awarded the Royal Spanish Academy Prize in 2014. His books have been published in twenty-six languages and forty countries. After sixteen years in France, Belgium and Spain, he now lives in Bogotà.
A NOTE ON THE TRANSLATOR
Anne McLean has translated works by many Spanish and Latin American authors including Héctor Abad, Javier Cercas, Carmen Martín Gaite, Julio Cortázar, Ignacio Martínez de Pisón, Enrique Vila-Matas and Tomás Eloy Martínez. Novels she has translated have been awarded the Premio Valle Inclán, the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. She lives in Toronto.
By the same author
The Informers
The Secret History of Costaguana
The Sound of Things Falling
The All Saints’ Day Lovers
Also available by Juan Gabriel Vásquez
The All Saints’ Day Lovers
‘A masterful writer’ Nicole Krauss
An old, orange train weaves its way through the Ardennes, carrying one man closer to a night in Brussels, the memory of which he soon wishes he could leave behind. A woman waits for her husband to return, while twenty kilometres away he fills the gaping void in a young widow’s bed. On a shooting party, a hunter ignores the flight of pheasants to extract justice from a very different target. Madame Michaud’s murder of her sister’s suitor prompts a long-awaited and exquisitely calculated revenge.
Achingly sad and exquisitely crafted, the seven stories in The All Saints’ Day Lovers together form an artistic whole, united by theme, mood, intense emotion and the starkly beautiful landscape of the Ardennes. Published in English for the first time in award-winning translator Anne McLean’s strong and supple versions, these stories are amongst Vásquez’s earliest writings but already show him to be a master of the form.
‘One of the most original new voices of Latin American literature’ Mario Vargas Llosa
‘A thrilling discovery’ Colm Tóibín
Click here to order
The Sound of Things Falling
Winner of the 2014 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
‘A powerful and humane novel about a man trying to make sense of a war he didn’t choose to fight’ The Times
No sooner does he get to know Ricardo Laverde in a seedy billiard hall in Bogotá than young Colombian lawyer 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.
‘A piece of Latin American literary noir ... This novel affords a rare understanding of the inhuman cost on the other side’ Guardian
‘The narrative escalates, the mystery deepens, and the scope of the story widens with each page ... Terrific’ Khaled Hosseini, Books of the Year
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The Secret History of Costaguana
‘With wonderful panache, Vásquez has reinvented Conrad and his literary geography ... A vivid, forceful, masterly book’ Alberto Manguel, Guardian
London, 1903. Joseph Conrad is struggling with his new novel set in the South American Republic he calls ‘Costaguana’. José Altamirano, Colombian by birth, has just arrived in London, and comes to the writer’s aid by telling him his life story. When Nostromo is published the following year, however, José is outraged: his story is nowhere to be found. But the reader is about to discover the true story.
The Secret History of Costaguana is a comic, tragic, despairing, but above all exhilarating novel, told by a bumptious narrator with a score to settle. It is Latin America’s lively riposte to Europe’s limiting vision of the continent and confirms Juan Gabriel Vásquez’s reputation as one of the leading novelists of his generation.
‘Splendid’ Daily Telegraph
‘Highly layered and intelligent … The most erudite and inventive Colombian novelist writing today’ Independent
Click here to order
The Informers
‘A fine and frightening study of how the past preys upon the present’ John Banville
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.
‘Subtle, assured, artfully told and painted in delicate Le Carrè- style shades of ambiguity, The Informers shows how mightily the novel in Colombia is thriving after the Márquez era … Anne McLean’s translation captures every shifting tone in the novel’s silvery palette’ Boyd Tonkin, Independent
‘An intricate tale of deceit, loyalty and tarnished relationships, told in beautifully restrained prose’ Times Literary Supplement
Click here to order
http://www.bloomsbury.com/author/juan-gabriel-vasquez
First published in 2013 in Spain as Las reputaciones by Alfaguara, Madrid
First published in Great Britain 2016
This electronic edition published in 2016 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
© Juan Gabriel Vásquez, 2013
English translation © Anne McLean, 2016
Juan Gabriel Vásquez has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.
This is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
The moral right of the author has been asserted
All rights reserved. You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
eISBN 978 1 4088 5287 3
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Reputations Page 14