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When Gabriel Santoro publishes his first book, A Life in Exile,it never occurs to him that his father, a distinguished professor of rhetoric, will write a devastating review in a national newspaper. The subject seems inoffensive enough: the life of a German Jewish woman (a close family friend) who arrived in Colombia shortly before the Second World War. So why does his father attack him so viciously? Do the pages of his book unwittingly hide some dangerous secret?
As Gabriel sets out to discover what lies behind his father's anger, he finds himself undertaking an examination of the duplicity, guilt and obsession at the heart of Colombian society in World War II, when the introduction of blacklists of German immigrants corrupted and destroyed many lives. Half a century later, in a gripping narrative that unpacks like a set of Russian dolls, one treacherous act perpetrated in those dark days returns with a vengeance, leading the reader towards a literal, moral and metaphorical cliff edge.
With a tightly honed plot, deftly crafted situations, and a cast of complex and varied characters, The Informers is a fascinating novel of callous betrayal, complicit secrecy and the long quest for redemption in a secular, cynical world. It heralds the arrival of a major literary talent.
(front flap)
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literary fiction, authors, social conditions, Novela, Fiction, Alemanes, Jews, Germans, Judíos, Politics and government, Social aspects, Literature, History, Ficción, New York Times reviewed, Fiction, historical, Fiction, political, Authors, fiction, World war, 1939-1945, fiction, Colombia, fiction, Jews, fiction, Germany, fiction, Fiction, jewish, Fiction, historical, general, Authors, World War, 1939-1945, German Jews, Social conditionsPeople
German JewsPlaces
ColombiaTimes
World War, 1939-1945, 20th century, 1930-1946Showing 5 featured editions. View all 14 editions?
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Die Informanten: Roman
2011-12, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag
Taschenbuch
in German
- [1. Auflage]
3596191580 9783596191581
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Work Description
When Gabriel Santoro's biography is scathingly reviewed by his own father, a public intellectual and famous Bogotá rhetorician, Gabriel could not imagine what had pierced his icy exterior to provoke such a painful reaction. A volume that catalogues the life of Sara Guterman, a longtime family friend and Jewish immigrant, since her arrival in Colombia in the 1930s, A Life in Exile seemed a slim, innocent exercise in recording modern history. But as a devastated Gabriel delves, yet again, into Sara's story, searching for clues to his father's anger, he cannot yet see the sinister secret buried in his research that could destroy his father's exalted reputation and redefine his own.
After his father's mysterious death in a car accident a few years later, Gabriel sets out anew to navigate half a century of half-truths and hidden meanings. With the help of Sara Guterman and his father's young girlfriend, Angelina, layer after shocking layer of Gabriel's world falls away and a complex portrait of his father emerges from the ruins. From the streets of 1940s Bogotá to a stranger's doorstep in 1990s Medellín, he unravels the web of doubt, betrayal, and guilt at the core of his father's life and he wades into a dark, longsilenced period of Colombian history after World War II.
In achingly beautiful prose, Juan Gabriel Vásquez delivers a powerful, riveting exploration of the sins of our fathers and the inescapability of the past. A novel that has already earned Vásquez international accolades, as well as comparaisons to W.G. Sebald, Jorge Luis Borges, and Philip roth, The Informers heralds the arrival of an extraordinary international talent.
(front flap)
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