As Colombia's famed political cartoonist, Javier Mallarino, strolls through downtown Bogotá in the hours before a public celebration of his career in the grand Teatro Colón, he contemplates the start of his professional life, and 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 outside 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.
Vásquez's terse, poetic prose contrasts starkly with the intense and sharply focused content of this beautifully structured novel. Questioning the power of memory and the media, and their ability to distort, inform and destroy, Vásquez plays with the past and the present, challenging our perception of the truth.
As Colombia's most famous political cartoonist strolls through downtown Bogotá in the hours before a public celebration of his career, he contemplates how forty years before he gave up painting and began drawing caricatures to earn a living. For years his cartoons have had the power to overturn a judge's decision, threaten the stability of a ministry or repeal a law, with the result that half the country loved him and the other half wished him dead. But as he leaves the theatre 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.
In the latest offering by Colombian author of
The Sounds of Things Falling, a celebrated political cartoonist us forced to confront an episode from his past - one that is likely not only to ruin his reputation but also leave his own sense of righteousness in tatters