London, 1903. Joseph Conrad is struggling with his new novel ('I amplacing it in South America in a Republic I call Costaguana'). Progressis slow and the great writer needs help from a native of the Caribbeancoast of South America. José Altamirano, Colombian at birth, who hasjust arrived in London, answers the great writer's advertisement andtells him his life story. José has been witness to the most horriblethings that a person or a country could suffer, and drags with him notjust a guilty conscience but a story that has almost destroyed him.But when Nostromo is published the following year José isoutraged by what he reads: 'You've eliminated me from my own life. You,Joseph Conrad, have robbed me.' I waved the Weekly in the air again, and then threw it down on his desk. 'Here,' I whispered, my back to the thief, 'I do not exist.'The Secret History of Costaguana, the second novel by JuanGabriel Vásquez to be published in English, is José Altamirano's riposteto Joseph Conrad. It is a big novel, tragic and despairing, comic andinsightful by turns, told by a bumptious narrator with a score tosettle. It is Latin America's post-modern answer to Europe's modernistvision. It is a superb, joyful, thoughtful and rumbustious novel thatwill establish Juan Gabriel Vásquez's reputation as one of the leadingnovelists of his generation.
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