Songs for the Flames

Juan Gabriel Vásquez is a Colombian author who has succeeded García Márquez as the literary grandmaster. His new book, Songs for the Flames, is a morally complex, searing set of stories that explore the lives of men and women touched by violence. The characters are all affected by the experience, and the lives of all of them are changed irrevocably.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 208 pages
Publication date: 16 September 2021
Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Juan Gabriel Vásquez is a master stylist and a virtuoso of patient pacing and intricate structure. He has succeeded García Márquez as the literary grandmaster of Colombia. A morally complex, searing set of stories by the award-winning author of The Sound of Things Falling and The Shape of the Ruins (shortlisted for the Booker International Prize 2019). A renowned photographer probes a traumatic incident in the life of a fellow guest at a countryside ranch. A chance meeting at a regimental reunion obliges a Korean War veteran to confront a shameful secret. And in the title story, an internet search for a book published in 1887 leads to the discovery of the life of a remarkable woman: Aurelia de Léon, who arrives in Colombia as a child orphan of the Great War, but as a free-spirited adult runs foul of her adoptive country's deep conservatism. The characters in Songs for the Flames are all men and women touched by violence - sometimes directly, sometimes tangentially - but the lives of all of them are irrevocably changed by the experience. Translated from the Spanish by Anne McLean

Weight: 160g
Dimension: 128 x 196 x 27 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781529405477