Shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2019

"Like Don DeLillo's JFK-themed Libra, the novel is an intoxicating blend of fact and fiction" Glasgow Herald

"A masterful writer" Nicole Krauss

"Vasquez has succeeded García Márquez as the literary grandmaster of Colombia" Ariel Dorfman, New York Review of Books

"A dazzlingly choreographed network of echoes and mirrorings" T.L.S.

It takes the form of personal and formal investigations into two political assassinations - the murders of Rafael Uribe Uribe in 1914, the man who inspired García Márquez's General Buendia in One Hundred Years of Solitude, and of the charismatic Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, the man who might have been Colombia's J.F.K., gunned down on the brink of success in the presidential elections of 1948. Separated by more than 30 years, the two murders at first appear unconnected, but as the novel progresses Vásquez reveals how between them they contain the seeds of the violence that has bedevilled Colombia ever since.

The Shape of the Ruins is Vásquez's most ambitious, challenging and rewarding novel to date. His previous novel, The Sound of Things Falling, won Spain's Alfaguara Prize, Italy's Von Rezzori Prize and the 2014 Dublin IMPAC literary Award.

Winner of the Prémio Literário Casino da Póvoa 2018
Finalist for the Bienal de Novela Mario Vargas Llosa 2016
Finalist for the Premio Bottari Lattes Grinzane 2017
Finalist for the Prix Fémina
Finalist for the Prix Médicis

Translated from the Spanish by Anne McLean

"For anyone who has read the entire works of Gabriel García Márquez and is in search of a new Colombian novelist, then Juan Gabriel Vásquez . . . is a thrilling new discovery." - Guardian.

"Juan Gabriel Vásquez . . . has succeeded García Márquez as the literary grandmaster of Colombia" - New York Review of Books

"Like Don DeLillo's JFK-themed Libra, the novel is an intoxicating blend of fact and fiction" - Glasgow Herald

"Juan Gabriel Vásquez's latest and most ambitious novel.... A dazzlingly choreographed network of echoes and mirrorings" - Times Literary Supplement

"With utmost skill, Vásquez has us accompany him in his detective work, proposing a reflection on ghosts from the past and the inheritance of blame, doubt and fear" - El Pais

"Absolutely hypnotic, a display of tense, agile, intelligent narrative, it takes conspiracy to a whole other level" - El Cultural

"Assembled with satisfying complexity . . . it's his most ambitious and accomplished work yet." - Prospect

"This clever, labyrinthine, thoroughly enjoyable historical novel by the Colombian author of The Informers and The Sound of Things Falling entangles the two deaths and investigates the internecine politics that lay behind them." - Guardian

"Beautifully voiced by his serial translator Anne McLean, Vásquez writes with the elliptical feints and ruses of a story-teller who admires Joseph Conrad in his most delphic moods. The result is sly, subtle, captivating." - Spectator.

"The most famous novelist to come out of Colombia since Gabriel García Márquez. His subtle, nuanced fiction uses the tools of documentary reportage - historical sleuthing and interviews with witnesses - to steer readers through the nation's labyrinthine past" - 1843 Mag (Economist)

"[A] gripping novel by one of Colombia's finest authors" - Financial Times