The Secret History of Costaguana
4/5
()
Unavailable in your country
Unavailable in your country
About this ebook
'Vivid, forceful, masterly' Guardian
'One of the most original new voices of Latin American literature' Mario Vargas Llosa
London, 1903. Joseph Conrad is struggling with his new novel ('I am placing it in South America in a Republic I call Costaguana'). Progress is slow and the great writer needs help from a native of the Caribbean coast of South America.
José Altamirano, Colombian at birth, who has just arrived in London, answers the great writer's advertisement and tells him his life story. José has been witness to the most horrible things that a person or a country could suffer, and drags with him not just a guilty conscience but a story that has almost destroyed him.
But when Nostromo is published the following year José is outraged 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 Juan Gabriel Vásquez to be published in English, is José Altamirano's riposte to Joseph Conrad. It is a big novel, tragic and despairing, comic and insightful by turns, told by a bumptious narrator with a score to settle. It is Latin America's post-modern answer to Europe's modernist vision. It is a superb, joyful, thoughtful and rumbustious novel that will establish Juan Gabriel Vásquez's reputation as one of the leading novelists of his generation.
Juan Gabriel Vasquez
Juan Gabriel Vásquez (born 1973) is a Colombian writer, best known for his novel The Sound of Things Falling, originally published in 2011. 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 Award, the Qwerty prize, the Alfaguara Prize and the Gregor von Rezzori Prize, and have been shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and the 2014 IMPAC Prize. His books have been published in sixteen languages and thirty countries. After sixteen years in France, Belgium and Spain, he now lives in Bogota.
Related to The Secret History of Costaguana
Related ebooks
Modeste Mignon Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Checkpoint Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSeldwyla Folks Three Singular Tales Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Cost of Living Like This Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Diaries of Emilio Renzi: Formative Years Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Passion in the Desert Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Ball at Sceaux Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Never Again: A Walk from Hook of Holland to Istanbul Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Cathedral: "In all science, error precedes the truth, and it is better it should go first than last." Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Two Murders in My Double Life: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Hypothermia Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Oraefi: The Wasteland Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAt the Blue Monkey: 33 Outlandish Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBecka's Buckra Baby Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Diplomat Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBush Studies Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsToo Close to the Edge: Shocking, hilarious and poignant noir Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Amber Seeker Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Closed Harbour: A Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBel Ami, or the History of a Scoundrel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsShearwater: A Bird, an Ocean, and a Long Way Home Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Warning to the Crocodiles Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGreenmantle Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Trials of Portnoy: how Penguin brought down Australia’s censorship system Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsArgos and His Master Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Woman from Uruguay Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Crystal Crown: Avantir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Two Plays Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMoby Dick Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Drowned Book: Picador Classic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for The Secret History of Costaguana
1 rating1 review
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The famous writer Joseph Conrad struggles to provide for his young family in early 20th century London, and is plagued with self-doubt about his ability to become a successful writer. The novel he is working on is set in South America, where he briefly captained a ship along the Colombian coast, but he finds himself unable to recall details about the country or its people, as he spent very little time there. He seeks the assistance of a well connected Colombian émigré, who puts Conrad in touch with José Altamirano, who has recently arrived in the capital. Altamirano shares the troubled and tragic story of his life and country with Conrad, hoping that the great novelist will tell the world what he has experienced. The following year the first segment of Conrad's novel Nostromo is published in a weekly literary magazine, which is set in the fictionalized country of Costaguana. Altamirano is infuriated, as the story is not about him at all, and confronts Conrad: "You've eliminated me from my own life. You, Joseph Conrad, have robbed me." The Colombian then decides that only he can tell his story, which serves as a retort to Conrad's life and work.Vásquez uses the life of Altamirano and his father, who was intimately involved in the initial disastrous attempt to build the Panama Canal, to create a fictionalized history of post-independence Colombia and Panama, one filled with opportunistic but deeply flawed characters whose plans brought misery and death upon thousands of its citizens and continue to haunt the country to the present day. The Secret History of Costaguana was an instructional and interesting novel. However, I found it to be a somewhat difficult read, as it was filled with far too many peripheral characters and too much inconsequential detail, which diluted the power of Altamirano's narrative. I would recommend this for anyone interested in the history of 19th century Colombia and Panama, and for anyone who has read Nostromo.