The Sound of Things Falling

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An intimate portrayal of the drug wars in Colombia, f rom international fiction star Juan Gabriel Vasquez. A fine and frightening study of how the past preys upon the present, and an absorbing revelation of a little-known wing of the theatre of the Nazi war.”— John Banville Although characters make flawed choices, the novel also hints at how little control they have, their lives "moulded by distant events, by other people's wills". Vásquez offers no polemic. Yet as debates on the legalisation of drugs remain weighted towards suffering in consumer countries, this novel affords a rare understanding of the inhuman costs on the other side.

Languid existential noir, one that may put you in mind of Paul Auster.”— Dwight Garner, New York Times Antonio incontra Maya, una donna che al bacio rivela un fiato pulito e stanco, un fiato da fine giornata, e non credo si possa dire meglio l’amore arrivato tardi. Languid existential noir, one that may put you in mind of Paul Auster." -- Dwight Garner, New York Times The man becomes obsessed with wanting to know why his friend was killed. He learns about a secret cassette tape. His dead friend was an older man who used to be an airplane pilot and who came from a family of pilots. As he investigates, the story is interwoven with bits of true history involving recent Colombian air crashes. In one crash his friend’s wife had been killed. There are historical crashes such as one in 1938 where a daredevil pilot performing for a national patriotic celebration crashed into stands killing more than 50 spectators and almost killing the President of Colombia. (Thus the title.) Other true history is part of the story such as the zoo and hippos that drug kingpin Escobar maintained at his estate. Starred Review. The compelling Vasquez strikes comparisons that hold up even in translation. Readers expecting a thrilling reenactment ofthe Colombian drug wars ofthe 1990s should look elsewhere, but those seeking a more genuine and magnificently written examination of memory's persistence will be satisfied.C’è un rumore, che non riesco, e non ci sono mai riuscito, a riconoscere: un rumore che non è umano è più che umano, il rumore delle vite che finiscono ma anche il rumore dei materiali che si rompono. È il rumore delle cose che cadono da quell’altezza, un rumore interrotto e dunque eterno, un rumore che non finisce più, che continua a risuonarmi nella testa da quel pomeriggio e non accenna a voler andarsene, che è sospeso per sempre nella mia memoria, appeso come un asciugamano al suo gancio.” A fine and frightening study of how the past preys upon the present, and an absorbing revelation of a little-known wing of the theatre of the Nazi war." -- John Banville From the opening paragraph of The Informers, I felt myself under the spell of a masterful writer. Juan Gabriel Vásquez has many gifts--intelligence, wit, energy, a deep vein of feeling--but he uses them so naturally that soon enough one forgets one's amazement at his talents, and then the strange, beautiful sorcery of his tale takes hold." -- Nicole Krauss

What Vásquez offers us, with great narrative skill, is that grey area of human actions and awareness where our capacity to make mistakes,betray, and conceal creates a chain reaction which condemns us to a world without satisfaction. Friends and enemies, wives and lovers, parents and children mix and mingle angrily, silently, blindly, while the novelist uses irony and ellipsis to unmask his characters’“self-protective strategies” and goes with them– not discovering them, simply accompanying them – as they come to understand that an unsatisfactory life can also be the life they inherit.”— Carlos Fuentes 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. Dazzling...a cerebral thriller that's both intellectually engaging and emotionally compelling, a lively tour de force."—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

Reader Reviews

Eventually, Maya and Antonio start a sexual friendship, and at the end of the novel, Aura leaves Antonio for good, taking the baby with her. Update this section! Set in Bogota, Colombia, our narrator, Antonio, becomes twinned to an enigmatic and shadowy ex-pilot named Ricardo Laverde, whom he meets in a Bogota billiard hall. Ricardo has been imprisoned for many years for unknown reasons. (The refrain is: “He must have done something.”) Antonio is with Ricardo during a drive-by motorbike shooting that ends one life and destroys the other. A lush and lyrical debut novel about a Costa Rican family wrestling with a deadly secret, from rising literary star John Manuel Arias An intricately detailed, audacious reframing of Nostromo, the classic 1904 Joseph Conrad tale of power, corruption, intrigue and revolution in a South American country he called Costaguana. The Secret History of Costaguana is a potent mixture of history, fiction and literary gamesmanship. Vásquez's themes are of the moment: powerful countries (the U.S. foremost among them) dabbling in Latin American politics, bribing politicians and journalists, trolling for profits; European writers appropriating history for their own tales. His particular triumph with this novel is to remind us, as Balzac put it, that novels can be 'the private histories of nations.'"-- Los Angeles Times Juan Gabriel Vásquez is one of the most original new voices of Latin American literature. His first novel, The Informers, a very powerful story about the shadowy years immediately following World War II, is testimony to the richness of his imagination as well as the subtlety and elegance of his prose." -- Mario Vargas Llosa

The Sound of Things Falling ( Spanish: El ruido de las cosas al caer) is the third novel of Colombian author Juan Gabriel Vásquez. Originally published in Spanish in 2011, the book explores the Colombian drug trade. It won the 2011 Alfaguara Prize. An English translation by Anne McLean was released in 2013 and won the 2014 International Dublin Literary Award. As Antonio reflects on the unsuspected intensity of his memories, which are “just now beginning to emerge like an object falling from the sky”, he thinks: “My contaminated life was mine alone: my family was still safe: safe from the plague of my country, from its afflicted recent history: safe from what had hunted me down along with so many of my generation (and others, too, yes, but most of all mine, the generation that was born with planes, with the flights full of bags and the bags of marijuana, the generation that was born with the War on Drugs and later experienced the consequence).” Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II. The Australian prog band channels the chaos of climate change into powerful songs that juxtapose beauty with unpredictable brutality. Bandcamp New & Notable Jul 28, 2021 go to album Il volo Aviana 203 era un volo nazionale partito dall’aeroporto di Bogotá-El Dorado diretto all’aeroporto Alfondo Bonilla Aragón di Calì, Colombia: il 27 novembre 1989 un ordigno esplose 5 minuti dopo il decollo. La bomba piazzata vicino ai serbatoi del carburante esplose incendiando i vapori di carburante presenti in un serbatoio vuoto. L'esplosione divise l'aereo in due parti: la punta dalla coda, e le due sezioni caddero a terra in fiamme. Tutti i 107 passeggeri morirono nell'esplosione e altre 3 persone vennero uccise dai detriti caduti a terra. Secondo le investigazioni la bomba fu caricata all'interno dell'aereo da un uomo in giacca e cravatta, il quale era riuscito a portare la bomba all'interno della propria valigetta. Il candidato presidente César Gaviria, che Escobar voleva eliminare, non era però salito sull’aereo.Personal Transformation - "I didn't yet know that an old Polish novelist had spoken a long time before of the shadow-line, that moment when a young man becomes the proprietor of his own life, but that was what I was feeling while my little girl was growing inside Aura's womb." So reflects Antonio when he joins dear wife Aura at the hospital for her ultrasound and he becomes fully aware he is now the proud father of a baby girl. At this point, little does Antonio Yammara realize his life will shortly undergo irreparable damage, that he will become the victim of extreme violence, caught in the crossfire of a drug gang's turf war.