The Shape of the Ruins

April 1, 2018

In this latest from Vásquez, author of the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award winner and national best seller The Sound of Things Falling, a man is arrested when he attempts to steal the bullet-pocked suit a Colombian politician was wearing when he was murdered. The man's private obsession reveals larger issues, as Vasquez investigates the conspiracy theories and political violence that have shaped his nation.

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July 15, 2018
A novelist becomes embroiled in conspiracy theories surrounding political assassinations in his native Colombia.Vásquez's fifth novel in English (Reputations, 2016, etc.) is a Paul Auster-style intellectual thriller, built on one part violence and two parts history- and irony-soaked interrogation of authorship. The narrator is also a novelist named Juan Gabriel Vásquez, who makes the acquaintance of Francisco, a doctor with a sideline studying and collecting artifacts of Colombian history, such as the 1948 assassination of politician Jorge Eliécer Gaitán. For instance, Francisco owns an X-ray of Gaitán's bullet-ridden chest and a piece of his vertebra in formaldehyde in a jar, both counterweights to truthers who believe he had more than one assassin--truthers like Francisco's friend Carlos, who so exasperates Juan Gabriel with his ahistorical riffs on 9/11, JFK, and Gaitán that the author flings a whiskey glass in his face. What kind of person gets so ridiculously obsessed with such contrarianism? But how ridiculous is it, exactly? Vásquez's goal is to better understand such thinking, and the novel is largely a study of another political assassination, of political figure Rafael Uribe Uribe in 1914. Officially, Uribe was crudely murdered by a pair of angry tradesmen acting alone. But Juan Gabriel's investigation leads him to a lawyer who at the time was exploring a deeper (and not-untenable) plot, distilling his findings into articles and a book. Was he mocked for lack of evidence or something more? A person's "noblest task" is to "thwart a lie the size of the world," Carlos tells Juan Gabriel, and the novel captures the questionable seductiveness of the job: This book, by design, is immersive in the way quicksand is, pulling the reader in directions often best resisted. Like any conspiracy theory, it's overly thick with information, but Vásquez successfully gives it a novelistic shape.A fine work of art about the blurry line between truth and artifice.

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Starred review from July 23, 2018
Colombian novelist Vásquez (Reputations) is author, narrator, and protagonist of this clever, complex novel about political crimes, cover-ups, conspiracies, and conspiracy theories. In 2005, Vásquez meets conspiracy enthusiast Carlos Carballo at a respected Bogotá surgeon’s home. Carballo voices suspicions regarding 9/11, Princess Di, and Vásquez’s uncle. During their next encounter, Carballo reveals obsessions with assassinations, Orson Welles, and writing a novel. When the surgeon asks Vásquez to befriend Carballo in order to find out if Carballo has stolen assassination artifacts from the surgeon’s collection, Vásquez makes a guest appearance on Carballo’s talk radio program, then agrees to write the novel Carballo envisions, which will expose links between Colombian conservatives and two assassinations: presidential candidate Jorge Eliécer Gaitán (1948) and General Rafael Uribe Uribe (1914). As he explores suppressed evidence, vanished witnesses, and distorted reports, Vásquez is left with more questions than answers. The novel, bolstered by humor and irony, includes photos, literary references, and intimate family moments, but the most memorable passages depict the assassinations and their aftermath. Vásquez’s captivating, disquieting account of a writer’s journey through the shadowy terrain of his country’s past dynamically illustrates how violence damages survivors, lies erode society, and fiction can convey truths history omits.