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Book of the Day: The Sound of Things Falling by Juan Gabriel Vasquez

Thursday, Jan 10, 2013 at 11:25am

Juan Gabriel Vasquez is an author to watch. He came onto my radar last year after I heard him speak with Eleanor Wachtel on CBC's Writers and Company. Since then I've had The Informers and The Secret History of Costaquana on my reading list. Now I'm anxious to read The Sound of Things Falling which has recently been released in English translation. I'm particularly keen after reading the Winnipeg Free Press call it a masterpiece in their weekend books pages.

Set in Columbia in 2009 in the city of Bogota, The Sound of Things Falling tells the story of Antonio Yammara who reads in a magazine about the hunting down of a hippopotamus that escaped from Pablo Escobar's zoo in the Magdalena valley. The article takes him back to the mid-1990s and a time when the war between Escobar's Medellin cartel and government forces played out violently in Columbia's streets and forests and in the skies above.

Back then Yammara, a disaffected young lawyer, used to while away long afternoons playing billiards with Ricardo Laverde, a solitary man with a shady past. One day Ricardo shows up with a cassette tape and shortly afterwards is shot dead on the street by an assassin on the back of a motorbike. So begins the mystery that haunts Antonio until it becomes an obsession.

Setting out to understand what happened and why, Antonio discovers that many ways in which his own life has been touched and shaped by his country's recent past. His inquiries lead 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 of violence and fear.

For those readers who have already discovered Vasquez this new novel appears to live up to high expectations. For new readers, including at least one bookseller at McNally Robinson, the new book does indeed signal another great writer to add to your list.

Categories: Saskatoon, Winnipeg, New Releases, Literature, Book of the Day

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