Reputations

Description

A taut new novel by the award-winning author of The Sound of Things Falling - 'one of the most original voices of Latin American literature', Mario Vargas Llosa 'An affecting, carefully paced work of psychological realism' Times Literary Supplement As Colombia's famed political cartoonist, Javier Mallarino, strolls through downtown Bogota before a public celebration of his career in the grand Teatro Colon, he contemplates the start of his professional life; how he set down his oils and took up a pen to begin drawing caricatures for a living. But the celebration has far-reaching consequences: as he leaves the theatre a figure from his past, now a young woman, emerges from the crowd and forces Mallarino to confront an incident that took place in his home half a lifetime ago, calling into question his reputation and the value of his life's work.

Juan Gabriel Vasquez was born in Bogota in 1973. He studied Latin American literature at the Sorbonne, and has translated works by E. M. Forster and Victor Hugo, amongst others, into Spanish. His previous books have won the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the Alfaguara Prize, the Gregor von Rezzori Prize, the Prix Roger Caillois and he has been shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. Reputations was awarded the Royal Spanish Academy Prize in 2014. His books have been published in twenty-six languages and forty countries. After sixteen years in France, Belgium and Spain, he now lives in Bogota. Anne McLean has translated works by many Spanish and Latin American authors including Javier Cercas, Hector Abad, Carmen Martin Gaite, Julio Cortazar, Ignacio Martinez de Pison, Enrique Vila-Matas and Tomas Eloy Martinez. She lives in Toronto.

Vasquez's prose, translated by Anne MacLean, is spare and effective, with a pleasing precision ... A strong writer with a compelling vision * Guardian * With this slim, clever book about the ebb and flow of history, and its unreliable companion memory, Vasquez shows that Latin America literature has, whatever he has to say about magical realism, lost none of its magic * Sunday Telegraph * A troubling story of a political cartoonist who finds his convictions tested when a traumatic past event returns to haunt him ... will take you far away into different and secret worlds -- Mariella Fostrup * Observer * This brief, elusive novel is all the more memorable for its gaps - not least the gap between our memories and the truth (whatever, in its turn, that may be) * Sunday Times * Vasquez has a searching style, which prods at the past and uncovers memories ... Reputations is also a fascinating portrait of an artist ... Deeply engaging and well-crafted * Herald * An affecting, carefully paced work of psychological realism * Times Literary Supplement * A masterful writer * Nicole Krauss * A thrilling new discovery * Colm Toibin * This is a magnificent novel, short and dense, whose three parts are calibrated to the millimetre * Le Monde * This is a powerfully written novella and Vasquez's prose, as always, has a stark elegance that lends it weight * Frank Wynne *