Review: The Informers by Juan Gabriel Vásquez...

History's shadows
Nick Caistor on Juan Gabriel Vásquez's The Informers, a tale of wartime betrayal and intrigue in Colombia
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Nick CaistorThe Guardian, Saturday 24 May 2008Article history
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The Informers
by Juan Gabriel Vásquez, translated by Anne McLean
338pp, Bloomsbury, £16.99
Novelists in Britain may feel the weight of earlier generations on their shoulders, influencing their choices and fictional concerns. But what about the new generation of writers from Colombia? Their efforts are almost obliterated by the overwhelming presence of Gabriel García Márquez, whose novels launched the school of magical realism and whose international renown has made it seem impossible for following generations to choose a different way to write.
Juan Gabriel Vásquez is a 35-year-old Colombian author, and The Informers, his first novel to be published in English, suggests one way out of the conundrum. In this dense, intricate book, he returns to the history rather than the myth of his country, examining its dark corners and the consequences of actions by characters who cannot suddenly sprout wings and fly away from their destiny, as García Márquez might have it.
The novel is constructed across four dates. The first is 1988, when journalist Gabriel Santoro stumbles on one of the hidden parts of Colombian history: the story of how Germans and Austrians were treated during the second world war. At first, those who opposed Hitler were regarded in the same way as Nazi sympathisers, but when President Santos took Colombia into the war on the side of the allies, Nazi sympathisers had their businesses confiscated and found themselves interned as possible spies and fifth columnists. The book Gabriel writes about this, A Life in Exile, is generally well received, except by his own father, who writes a damning criticism of it.
Gabriel's father then distances himself from his son, only relenting when he faces a heart operation and asks to see him. The operation gives the old man a new lease of life, but he dies suddenly in a car crash a few months later. As a result of his death, Gabriel tries to discover more about his father's early life; he is horrified to find out from an old friend that his father was one of the second world war informers. Worse, he informed on a family of close friends, who were resolutely anti-Nazi, with terrible consequences.
Gabriel wants to know more about the exact circumstances surrounding his father's death. He knows that he travelled to the city of Medellín with the young woman who had become his lover, but not why he wanted to make the trip. When he does find out, it takes him back once again to the tragic days of the war, and the betrayals and failed loyalties that seem to characterise the life of almost every character in the book.
What the narrator learns about his father spurs him to write another book, this time a fictional recreation of what might have happened not only during the war, but in his father's last moments. There is a further twist when the friend betrayed by his father reads the book, and tells him his father came to see him the day before he died. Gabriel sets out for Medellín with the hope of uncovering what transpired between the two men, who had not seen each other for more than 40 years. As so often in real life, the result leaves more questions than it answers.
Vásquez shows a mastery of technique and language. The examination of the consequences that a single act can have not only for the person committing it but also, through the ripple effect, for many others brings us into the territory of Ian McEwan's Atonement. The novel may not have the fireworks of magical realism, but its sure construction of narrative and vivid portrayal of a wide array of characters build an extraordinary tale, one which reminds the reader that any novel can be a fascinating mixture of magic and realism.
· Juan Gabriel Vásquez appears at the Hay festival (24 May 2008).
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Review: The Informers by Juan Gabriel Vásquez
This article appeared on p13 of theFeatures & reviews section ofthe Guardian onSaturday 24 May 2008. It was published onguardian.co.uk at 00.14 BST on Saturday 24 May 2008.
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