Publisher's Synopsis
<p><b>"Like Bolaño, Vásquez is a master stylist and a </b><b>virtuoso of patient pacing and intricate structure" </b>LEV GROSSMAN, <i>Time Magazine</i><br><br><br><b>"Juan Gabriel Vásquez . . . has succeeded García </b><b>Márquez as the literary grandmaster of Colombia" </b>ARIEL DORFMAN, <i>New York Review of Books</i><br><br><br><b>A morally complex, searing set of stories by the award-winning author of </b><b><i>The Sound of Things Falling</i></b><b> and </b><b><i>The Shape of the Ruins </i></b><b>(shortlisted for the Booker International Prize 2019).</b><br><br>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.<br><br>The characters in <i>Songs for the Flames </i>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.<br><br><br><b>Translated from the Spanish by Anne McLean</b></p>
