The Sound of Things Falling
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The Sound of Things Falling by Juan Gabriel Vásquez
The dark, brilliant new novel by the author of The Informers and The Secret History of Costaguana. No sooner does he get to know Ricardo Laverde than disaffected young Colombian lawyer Antonio Yammara realises that his new friend has a secret, or rather several secrets. Antonio's fascination with the life of ex-pilot Ricardo Laverde begins by casual acquaintance in a seedy Bogotá billiard hall and grows until the day Ricardo receives a cassette tape in an unmarked envelope. Asking Antonio to find him somewhere private to play it, they go to a library. The first time he glances up from his seat in the next booth, Antonio sees tears running down Laverde's cheeks; the next, the ex-pilot has gone. Shortly afterwards, Ricardo is shot dead on a street corner in Bogotá by a guy on the back of a motorbike and Antonio is caught in the hail of bullets. Lucky to survive, and more out of love with life than ever, he starts asking questions until the questions become an obsession that leads him to Laverde's daughter. His troubled investigation leads all the way back to the early 1960s, marijuana smuggling and a time before the cocaine trade trapped a whole generation of Colombians in a living nightmare of fear and random death. Juan Gabriel Vasquez is one of the leading novelists of his generation, and The Sound of Things Falling that tackles what became of Colombia in the time of Pablo Escobar is his best book to date.
From the opening paragraph I felt myself under the spell of a masterful writer * Nicole Krauss [on The Informers] *
As if mature Le Carré had wandered into the narrative labyrinths of Borges * Boyd Tonkin, Independent [on The Informers] *
A thrilling new discovery * Colm Tóibín *
A fine and frightening study * John Banville [on The Informers] *
One of the most original original voices of Latin American literature * Mario Vargas Llosa *
As if mature Le Carré had wandered into the narrative labyrinths of Borges * Boyd Tonkin, Independent [on The Informers] *
A thrilling new discovery * Colm Tóibín *
A fine and frightening study * John Banville [on The Informers] *
One of the most original original voices of Latin American literature * Mario Vargas Llosa *
Juan Gabriel Vásquez was born in Bogotá in 1973. He studied Latin American literature at the Sorbonne between 1996 and 1998, and now lives in Barcelona. His stories have appeared in anthologies in Germany, France, Spain and Colombia, and he has translated works by E. M. Forster and Victor Hugo, amongst others, into Spanish. He was recently nominated as one of the Bogotá 39, South America's most promising writers of the new generation. His highly praised novel The Informers, the first of his books to be translated into English, has been published in eight languages worldwide. Anne McLean has twice won the Independent Prize for Foreign Fiction: for Soldiers of Salamis by Javier Cercas in 2004 (which also won her the Valle Inclán Award) and for The Armies by Evelio Rosero in 2009.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781408838228 |
| ISBN 10 | 1408838222 |
| Title | The Sound of Things Falling |
| Author | Juan Gabriel Vásquez |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing PLC |
| Year published | 2012-11-08 |
| Number of pages | 320 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |