Songs for the Flames: Stories

Product Description
A new collection of electric, searing stories from award-winning, bestselling author Juan Gabriel Vásquez.\nThe characters in
Songs for the Flames are men and women touched by violence—sometimes directly, sometimes only in passing—but whose lives are changed forever, consumed by fire and by unexpected encounters and unyielding forces.\nA photographer becomes obsessed with the traumatic past that an elegant woman, a fellow guest staying at a countryside ranch, would rather leave behind. A military reunion forces a soldier to confront a troubling history, both personal and on a larger scale. And in a tour-de-force piece, the search for a book leads a writer to the fascinating story of why a woman is buried next to a graveyard, rather than in it—and the remarkable account of her journey from France to Colombia as a child orphan.\nJuan Gabriel Vásquez returns to stories with these nine morally complex tales, fresh proof of his narrative versatility and his profound understanding of the lives of others. There’s a romantic wistfulness that combusts with the realities of dangerous histories, both personal and political, to throw these characters into the flames from which they either emerge purified, reborn, or burned and destroyed.
Review
Praise for Songs for the Flames\n“Prodigious author, journalist, and translator Vásquez, one of South America’s most important writers, is once again deftly translated by award-winning [Anne] McLean.”
–Booklist, starred review\n“A bravura collection blending autofiction with stories of historical and personal trauma…Vásquez continues to distinguish himself among the finest writers from Latin America.”
–
Publishers Weekly
, starred review\n“Vásquez paints a picture of a country that’s constantly buffeted by violent political rivalries, narcos, and war and where even bystanders get drawn in. A bracing set of stories about smaller traumas embedded among a country’s larger crises.”
–Kirkus Reviews\nPraise for Juan Gabriel Vásquez\n“Masterly.” – Yiyun Li,
New York Times Book Review
"Like Bolaño, [Vasquez] is a master stylist and a virtuoso of patient pacing and intricate structure." – Lev Grossman, Time Magazine\n"Exceptional." -
The Wall Street Journal
“The narrative escalates, the mystery deepens, and the scope of the story widens with each page.” – Khaled Hosseini\n"Dramatic and surprising." -
Harper's Magazine
"Remarkable." -
Washington Post
"Razor-sharp" —
O, the Oprah Magazine
“Juan Gabriel Vásquez is one of the most original new voices of Latin American literature.” —Mario Vargas Llosa
About the Author
Juan Gabriel Vásquez's previous books include the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award winner and national bestseller
The Sound of Things Falling, and Man Booker International finalist
The Shape of the Ruins, as well as the award-winning
Reputations,
The Informers,
The Secret History of Costaguana, and the story collection
Lovers on All Saints' Day. His books have been published in twenty-eight languages worldwide. After sixteen years in Europe, he now lives in Bogotá.\nAnne McLean is a Spanish translator who has twice won both the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and the Premio Valle Inclán, and received the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award with Juan Gabriel Vásquez for his novel
The Sound of Things Falling. She lives in Toronto.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
I\nI have always wanted to write the story the photographer told me, but I could not have done so without her permission or her collusion: other people's stories are inviolable territory, or that's how it's always seemed to me, because often there is something in them that informs or defines a life, and stealing them in order to write them is much worse than revealing a secret. Now, for reasons that don't matter, she has allowed me this usurpation, and in return has only asked that I tell the story just as she told it