Synopsis
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.
About Juan Gabriel Vasquez
See more books from this AuthorThe catalyst for memory here is perhaps unique in the history of the novel, for Yammara begins by recounting an anecdote involving a hippopotamus...
Read Full Review of The Sound of Things Falling: ... | See more reviews from Kirkus“The Sound of Things Falling” may be a page turner, but it’s also a deep meditation on fate and death. Even in translation, the superb quality of Vásquez’s prose is evident...
Read Full Review of The Sound of Things Falling: ... | See more reviews from NY TimesThe plot can seem overdetermined. I turned the pages with interest — Mr. Vásquez is a gifted writer — but without special eagerness.
Read Full Review of The Sound of Things Falling: ... | See more reviews from NY TimesVasquez allows the story to become Elaine’s, and as the puzzle of Laverde is pieced together, Yammara comes to realize just how thoroughly the stories of these other people are part of his own.
Read Full Review of The Sound of Things Falling: ... | See more reviews from Publishers WeeklyThe Sound of Things Falling is that unique detective story where we're more interested in the narrator's inner life than the mystery surrounding him. Vasquez has taken the psychological novel and made it political. Turned mystery fiction into contemporary history.
Read Full Review of The Sound of Things Falling: ... | See more reviews from NPRVasquez gives us delicate renderings of a sonogram...of insomnia...He gives us the decomposition of a young man's family in the 1990s and the ripening of a young woman's first love in the 1970s.
Read Full Review of The Sound of Things Falling: ... | See more reviews from NPRMr. Vásquez weaves together memory and imagery into a seamless whole. Anne McLean's translation gives the novel a looseness, imbuing Antonio Yammara with a detached and damaged persona.
Read Full Review of The Sound of Things Falling: ... | See more reviews from NY Journal of BooksJuan Gabriel Vásquez's deeply affecting and closely observed new novel takes up the psychic aftermath of that era, as residents of Colombia's capital, Bogota, struggle to make sense of the disorder and dysfunction that's enveloped their daily lives.
Read Full Review of The Sound of Things Falling: ... | See more reviews from LA TimesAn aggregated and normalized score based on 389 user ratings from iDreamBooks & iTunes
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