Necropolis
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
An author visiting Jerusalem is pulled into a stranger's mysterious death in this gripping, moving novel by one of Colombia's major literary voices.
Winner of the La Otra Orilla Literary Award
Upon recovering from a prolonged illness, an author is invited to a literary gathering in Jerusalem that turns out to be a most unusual affair. In the conference rooms of a luxury hotel, as war rages outside, he listens to a series of extraordinary life stories: the saga of a chess-playing duo, the tale of an Italian porn star with a socialist agenda, the drama of a Colombian industrialist who has been waging a longstanding battle with local paramilitaries, and many more.
But it is José Maturana—evangelical pastor, recovering drug addict, ex-con—with his story of redemption at the hands of a charismatic tattooed messiah from Miami, Florida, who fascinates the author more than any other. Maturana's language is potent and vital, and his story captivating. Hours after his stirring presentation to a rapt audience, however, Maturana is found dead in his hotel room. At first it seems likely that he has taken his own life. But there are a few loose ends that don't support the suicide hypothesis, and the author is moved by Maturana's life story to discover the truth about his death, in a literary mystery from "one of the most interesting Latin American writers . . . his most ambitious novel yet" (La Nación).
"A modern Decameron." —La Liberté
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The International Conference on Biography and Memory is being held in Jerusalem, and our nameless hero, "a working writer," is honored to be invited after a hiatus from writing due to illness. When he arrives, he is shocked to find the city torn apart by war: "Facing us was a labyrinth of asymmetrical streets, pockmarked with holes and filled with steaming garbage. The houses, cubes of stone the color of sand, bore the marks of grenades and mortars on their walls." His experience only grows more intense as he sets out to find the truth behind the sudden death of charismatic conference speaker Jos Maturana. The structure of Gamboa's modern-day literary thriller ushers readers directly into the action the protagonist's point of view is intertwined with Maturana's narrative in the first section, while the second portion comprises three other conference speakers' lectures, each of which is a richly told story in its own right. Finally, the last part of the novel returns to the writer's quest to solve Maturana's mysterious death. The Colombian-born Gamboa's work calls to mind Roberto Bola o in its masterful suspense, complex literary references, and frank depiction of violence, sex, and drugs, but this novel stands on its own as a masterwork of storytelling.
