The Shape of the Ruins: Shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2019 - Softcover

Vásquez, Juan Gabriel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 085705659X ISBN 13: 9780857056597

Publisher: MacLehose Press, 2018

Synopsis

The Shape of the Ruins by the Colombian writer Juan Gabriel Vásquez, whose recent novel, the best-selling Sound of Things Falling won Spain's Alfaguara Prize, Italy's Von Rezzori Prize and the 2014 Dublin IMPAC literary Award, was published to acclaim in Colombia last year and has just appeared in Spain.

It takes the form of personal and formal investigations into two political assassinations - the murders of Rafael Uribe Uribe in 1914, the man who inspired García Márquez's General Buendia in One Hundred Years of Solitude, and of the charismatic Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, the man who might have been Colombia's J.F.K., gunned down on the brink of success in the presidential elections of 1948. Separated by more than 30 years, the two murders at first appear unconnected, but as the novel progresses Vásquez reveals how between them they contain the seeds of the violence that has bedevilled Colombia ever since. The Shape of the Ruins is Vásquez's most ambitious, challenging and rewarding novel to date.

About this title

About the Authors

JUAN GABRIEL VÁSQUEZ is the author of five previous novels, The Informers, The Secret History of Costaguana, Reputations, The Sound of Things Falling and International Booker-shortlisted The Shape of the Ruins, as well as two acclaimed story collections The All Saints' Day Lovers and Songs for the Flames. He is also the translator into Spanish of works by E. M. Forster, John Hersey and Victor Hugo. His own books have been translated into more than twenty languages.

ANNE MCLEAN has translated works by Hector Abad,
Julio Cortázar and Enrique Vila-Matas. She has
twice won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize,
for Soldiers of Salamis by Javier Cercas and for The
Armies by Evelio Rosero, and in 2012 was awarded
the Spanish Cross of the Order of Civil Merit.

Edition details

• Publisher: MacLehose Press
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 085705659X
• ISBN 13: 9780857056597
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 512