Book Discussion: The Sound of Things Falling: A Novel, by Juan Gabriel Vasquez

The Sound of Things Falling gives us a vision of the drug culture unraveling a generation of Colombians, one life at a time. Soon after he gets to know Ricardo Laverde, disaffected young Colombian lawyer Antonio Yammara realizes that his new friend has a secret, or rather, several secrets. Shortly after their meeting, Ricardo is shot and killed on a street corner in Bogotá and Yammara is caught in the crossfire. Yammara’s subsequent investigation harkens back to the early 1960s, a time of marijuana smuggling, years before the cocaine trade trapped a whole generation of Colombians in a living nightmare of fear and random death.

 

April 7, 2014