A powerful, humane novel about a man trying to make sense of a war he didn't choose to fight * Kate Saunders, The Times *
Compelling ... He holds his narrative together with admirable stylistic control as he shows a world falling apart and the powers of love and language to rebuild it * Anita Sethi, Observer *
A piece of Latin American literary noir that lays bare the costs of the drug trade ... In a return to the thriller form of Vasquez's superb The Informers ... A heartfelt account of the drama suffered by a generation ... Vasquez offers no polemic. Yet as debates on the legalisation of drugs remain weighted towards suffering in consumer countries, this novel affords a rare understanding of the inhuman cost on the other side * Maya Jaggi, Guardian *
The Sound of Things Falling has a strikingly idiosyncratic tone: wistful, elegiac almost, but not at all sentimental ... beautifully written * Irish Times *
Enigmatic * Boyd Tonkin, Independent Books of the Year *
The work reads beautifully. Vasquez's persistence in exploring the darker corners of his country's history, in probing his characters' intractable duality, and in questioning the frailties of memory, is compounded by his skill in evoking those instances when things change forever: such as when the telephone rings * Independent *
The story is compelling but through Vasquez's vivid prose (rendered brilliantly into English by the award-winning translator Anne McLean) it also becomes haunting ... A poignant and perturbing tale about the inheritance of fear in a country scrabbling to regain its soul * Financial Times *
Aided by the characteristic excellence of Anne McLean's translation, memories, multiple ironies and descriptive passages of stunning force flow effortlessly into each other, so much so that you wonder how much longer Vasquez is going to be able to maintain the intensity. Admirers of Vasquez will expect of him such verbal virtuosity. But there is an additional emotional element to The Sound of Things Falling that takes this novel to a higher level * Daily Telegraph *
There is much to enjoying Vasquez's latest book (admirably rendered in English by Anne McLean). His intense, intricate prose is far removed from the pyrotechnics of an earlier generation of Latin American novelists. It seeks to bring the topics dealt with by Colombian writers solidly into the mainstream. His probing of the interaction between private worlds and public events is reminiscent of Philip Roth * Times Literary Supplement *
Celebrated Colombian Juan Gabriel Vasquez's latest novel brings to the fore the full, tragic force of the drugs trade on those in the source countries in this captivating Latin American noir ... The sense of loss and melancholy are superbly held in a novel that explores the pain and release to be found in revisiting the past * Metro *
A sobering book, The Sound of Things Falling makes a virtue of pained honesty about Colombia's recent past. Only a reckoning can help its citizens to love their country again. The saddest thing that can happen to a person, Maya remarks, is to find out their memories are lies. Truths may be difficult - murky and stained with compromise - but they offer a path forward * The Literary Review *
Impressed by an expansive novel of Colombia's past and present ... Vasquez follows Balzac's maxim that novels are the private histories of nations * Sunday Telegraph *
From the opening paragraph I felt myself under the spell of a masterful writer * Nicole Krauss [on The Informers] *
As if mature Le Carre had wandered into the narrative labyrinths of Borges * Boyd Tonkin, Independent [on The Informers] *
A thrilling new discovery * Colm Toibin *
A fine and frightening study * John Banville [on The Informers] *
One of the most original original voices of Latin American literature * Mario Vargas Llosa *