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    The Shape of the Ruins: A Novel
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    The Shape of the Ruins: A Novel
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    The Shape of the Ruins: A Novel
    Audiobook17 hours

    The Shape of the Ruins: A Novel

    Written by Juan Gabriel Vasquez

    Narrated by Sheldon Romero

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    A sweeping tale of conspiracy theories, assassinations, and twisted obsessions—the much anticipated masterpiece from Juan Gabriel Vásquez.

    The Shape of the Ruins is a masterly story of conspiracy, political obsession, and literary investigation. When a man is arrested at a museum for attempting to steal the bullet-ridden suit of a murdered Colombian politician, few notice. But soon this thwarted theft takes on greater meaning as it becomes a thread in a widening web of popular fixations with conspiracy theories, assassinations, and historical secrets; and it haunts those who feel that only they know the real truth behind these killings.

    This novel explores the darkest moments of a country's past and brings to life the ways in which past violence shapes our present lives. A compulsive read, beautiful and profound, eerily relevant to our times and deeply personal, The Shape of the Ruins is a tour-de-force story by a master at uncovering the incisive wounds of our memories.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateSep 25, 2018
    ISBN9780525640554
    Unavailable
    The Shape of the Ruins: A Novel
    Author

    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.

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    Reviews for The Shape of the Ruins

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    • 5/5
      This historical novel by the award winning Colombian author begins with the arrest of Carlos Carballo, a shadowy man caught breaking into a glass case containing the suit worn by Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, the leader of the Colombian Liberal Party, when he was assassinated in the capital of Bogotá on April 9, 1948. Gaitán was the leader of the country's socialist movement, a leading candidate to become the president of Colombia in the upcoming election, and a charismatic politician who was beloved by his poor and working class countrymen, although he was reviled by conservatives, especially those who supported Francisco Franco's fascist government in Spain, and by the Catholic Church. He was shot in broad daylight by a young Nazi sympathzer, who, like Lee Harvey Oswald, was officially determined to be the sole assassin, despite evidence suggesting that others may have been involved in a plot to murder him. Gaitán later died of his wounds, and his death led to massive riots in the capital with the deaths of as many as 5,000 people in a 10 hour period, which became known as El Bogotazo, and La Violencia, the subsequent decade long civil war between the Liberal and Conservative Parties that claimed the lives of an estimated 200,000 Colombians, which continues to affect the country to this day.Carballo was introduced to the novel's narrator, a young writer named Juan Gabriel Vásquez, who recently moved back to Bogotá from Barcelona with his pregnant wife, by a mutual friend. Carballo has devoted his adult life to uncovering the source behind the murder of Gaitán and General Rafael Uribe Uribe, another popular and influential Colombian socialist politician, who was reportedly killed by two craftsmen in Bogotá in 1914 that were suspected, though never definitively proven, of being sponsored by high ranking conservative politicians and religious officials. Carballo doggedly pursues the young Vásquez in an effort to get him to write a book about the unsuccessful independent investigation into Uribe's murder by a young lawyer, Marco Tulio Andoza, and to draw a link between that crime and the assassination of Gaitán. Vásquez and their mutual friend view Carballo as a half cocked conspiracy theorist, whose motives for his tireless pursuit of these apparently solved murder cases are unclear to them. Eventually Vásquez is coerced into taking Carballo's bait, and he learns more about the two assassinations, while he secretly learns more about Carballo's past and his reasons for being so interested in them.Most of the novel is spent in descriptions of the two victims, their place in the country's 20th century history, the murderers, and those who favored, if not supported and benefitted from, their deeds. A revelation by Carballo at the end of the novel provides a sense of closure, and we learn why he was so devoted to uncovering the truth behind the murder of Gaitán.The Shape of the Ruins is written in a similar fashion as the recent novel The Impostor by Javier Cercas, in which Cercas serves as the narrator and writes about a controversial figure in post-World War II Spain. Vásquez's scope is more broad, as much of his country's history in the past century can be linked to these two murders, and a more detailed explanation is required to inform the reader about his less well known homeland. This novel dragged in spots, at least for me, and it could arguably have been a bit shorter, but overall it was a superb book that was highly educational and entertaining, and it's my favorite of the four novels I've read by Vásquez so far. The Shape of the Ruins is an excellent choice for this year's Man Booker International Prize longlist, and is highly recommended to anyone interested in the literature and history of South America.
    • 4/5
      Another interesting piece of documentary fiction, although this is a bit more in the tradition of W.G. Sebald than of the Javier Cercas novels I've been reading lately: although the narrator and central character of this book is a Colombian novelist called Juan Gabriel Vásquez, and the story deals with his developing interest in two major events from Colombian history, the assassinations of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán in 1948 and of Rafael Uribe Uribe in 1914, Vásquez mixes in obvious fictional elements and techniques with obviously real documentary material, as well as a scattering of minor details that we can't be so sure about (one novelist who plays an important part in the story, Rafael Humberto Moreno Durán, was a real colleague of Vásquez, and Gabriel García Márquez seems to have existed too, but not all the authors mentioned in the text are quite as real...). And authentic-looking photographs and documents reproduced on the page, a very Sebaldish touch.Speaking of Gabriel García Márquez - it struck me how, with the same historical events to deal with, his steamy, exotic Colombia feels like a completely different country from the very urban, 20th century environment Vásquez describes.As well as what it tells us specifically about Colombia, this is a book about how we, as individuals, relate to history and the artefacts it leaves behind. Vásquez sees us all as trying in different ways to resolve the conflict between our rational awareness that real-life events are mostly random, arbitrary and related only in simple, obvious ways (the Occam's razor approach), and the more emotionally-satisfying urge to impose meaning and connection on the world, even if that means hypothesising the existence of complex and unlikely conspiracies. And of course when the narrator of a novel selects events to tell us about, we have a higher expectation of meaning and connection than we would have in real life, and this gives the author extra opportunities to play little tricks on us.I did feel occasionally that I had been chosen as guinea-pig for a self-assessed psychology experiment, and at other times that I was learning more about the narrator's life than could possibly be relevant, but Vásquez is good at judging what he does, and he kept me wanting to carry on reading and find out where the book would go next. Very worthwhile.
    • 4/5
      Superficially, THE SHAPE OF THE RUINS seems to be historical fiction focusing on politics, but it is neither of those things. In reality the novel is a clever exploration of conspiracy theories: their nature, origins, the types of people who embrace them and the motivations some have to cover them up. Vasquez uses a conversational style with himself as the narrator and protagonist. He packs the novel with information (too much?) and even some historical photos including hearsay, autopsy material, witness accounts, and general gossip surrounding two Columbian assassinations.Vasquez uses conspiracy theories that arose around the murders of General Rafael Uribe Uribe (1914) and Jorge Eliécer Gaitán (1948) to understand why people tend to reject facts in favor of unsubstantiated suppositions. This broadens to an examination of the nature of truth, the limitations of the historical record, and the obsessions that often surround such incidents. The assassinations of two Columbian political figures may seem a little obscure to most. But many will readily relate to similar theories that continue to swirl around other more high profile deaths like JFK, Princess Diana, and Marilyn Monroe. “Those human ruins were memoranda of our past errors, and at some point they were also prophecies.”The novel focuses on two conspiracy theorists that Vasquez pits against one another: one charming and the other repellent. Francisco Benavides, an empathic doctor and son of Columbia’s most renowned forensic scientist, rescues artifacts from his father’s collection. These include a portion of Gaitán’s spine containing an assassin’s bullet and an xray of his bullet-riddled body. These mysteriously disappear in a burglary of the Benevides home. He suspects Carlos Carballo, his father’s former student, who is obsessed with the Gaitán assassination. Francisco recruits Vasquez to befriend Carlos. He asks him to pretend to offer to write an expose book about Gaitán’s murder as a ruse to retrieve the artifacts. Vasquez rapidly becomes enmeshed in Carballo’s obsession with the Gaitán assassination as well as that or General Uribe which occurred several decades earlier. He observes conspiracy nuts on Carballo’s late night call-in radio show. He also reads about an aborted investigation of the Uribe assassination conducted by a young attorney, Marco Tulio Anzola. The latter alleges numerous suspicious occurrences including vanishing witnesses, lost evidence, mysterious well-dressed men, and police collusion. These, along with the death of the suspected assassins in both murders, seem to suggest conspiracy.Despite often bogging down with the shear volume of facts he includes and his aimless narrative, Vasquez maintains interest primarily through a conversational tone and by resisting the temptation to provide easy answers. Along with Vasquez, the reader finds himself sucked into the dark world of conspiracy thinking.
    • 5/5
      I picked up this book because of a review in the Guardian, and because it was shorlisted for the Man Book international in 2019. This is almost three books in one, three stories, delineating the convulsions of Colombian history through two key political assassinations, the 1914 murder of General Rafael Uribe Uribe and the 1948 assassination of Jorge Eliecer Gaitan (which started the 10-year period known as La Violencia), both Liberal leaders. The 3rd storyline is the first person one. The three storylines are interwoven in a way that makes the book part history, part murder mystery, part reflection of what is history / History.
      This is not an easy read. This is a book that demands your attention but is really well worth it.
    • 2/5
      The Shape of Ruins: A Novel, Juan Gabriel Vasquez, author; Sheldon Romero, narratorAfter listening to almost half of the book, I finally gave up. It just never grabbed or held my attention. It never called me back to its pages, although I made several attempts to reengage with the story.From what I read, it is about the history and unrest in Columbia. Its politics and corruption are explored. The research is thorough, but the story travels in too many different directions that I found hard to reconnect as the novel continued. Characters appeared and reappeared, and I would have to struggle to remember what their place was in the narrative.It is historic fiction, peppered with a great deal of information. The author is playing the role of the main character who is telling the story. When it begins, the reader learns of a man who was arrested for trying to steal the bullet-ridden suit of candidate Jorge Gaitan who was murdered in 1948. Through the memories of Juan Vasquez, the story is told. The reader learns of the reason that brought Vasquez to Columbia. He and his wife were visiting relatives. His wife, pregnant with twins, had to be hospitalized there for a lengthy period because of complications from her high risk pregnancy. While there, Vasquez reunites with people like, Dr. Francisco Benavides, the son of the medical examiner who handled Gaitan’s body. He also learns more about, and meets, Carlos Carballo, the man was being accused of trying to steal the damaged suit belonging to Guitan.In the course of conversations about possible conspiracies surrounding Guitans murder, Vasquez learns about the conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the Twin Towers attack on 9/11. The similarities are explored. Was the murdered Roa Sierra the real murderer of Guitan? Did Lee Harvey Oswald act alone? Who really engineered the terror attack on the Twin Towers? Carballo, who tried to steal Guitan’s suit, wants Vasquez to write the true story of Gaitan’s death, as he sees it. He has all the information prepared. Presumably, he had wanted another author to write it, the renowned R.H., but he died before he was able to fulfill the task. It was at that author’s funeral that Vasquez was approached by Carballo. Vasquez refuses and when the twins are born, they all return to Spain. Years later, he is again in Columbia and tries to contact Dr. Benavides to apologize for his behavior. He had been really disrespectful to him when they last saw each other, with Vasquez misinterpreting the doctor’s effort to help as interference and tainted in some way, Often the character Vasquez is rude and arrogant, making him a bit unlikable.To enhance the narrative, ordinary occasions and events, that we all may experience, like funerals, births, are introduced. The reader feels drawn to consider their own reactions, along with the characters’ reactions, at those times. Unfortunately, it sometimes felt drawn out and tedious. There was an overarching philosophy introduced in the narrative. “The future of the babies being born was in their hands. The dead were no longer involved, nor were they capable of feeling or showing love”. The history was influencing the future.Mixing fact and fiction, the author weaves a story that I found confusing, but fact-filled, which was its most redeeming feature.