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    Reputations
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    Reputations
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    Reputations
    Audiobook4 hours

    Reputations

    Written by Juan Gabriel Vasquez

    Narrated by Robert Fass

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    A brilliant novel about the power of politics and personal memory from one of South America's literary stars, the New York Times bestselling author of The Sound of Things Falling.

    Javier Mallarino is a living legend. He is his country's most influential political cartoonist, the consciousness of a nation. A man capable of repealing laws, overturning judges' decisions, destroying politicians' careers with his art. His weapons are pen and ink. Those in power fear him and pay him homage.

    After four decades of a brilliant career, he's at the height of his powers. But this all changes when he's paid an unexpected visit from a young woman who upends his sense of personal history and forces him to re-evaluate his life and work, questioning his position in the world.

    In Reputations, Juan Gabriel Vásquez examines the weight of the past, how a public persona intersects with private histories, and the burdens and surprises of memory. In this intimate novel that recalls authors like Coetzee and Ian McEwan, Vásquez plumbs universal experiences to create a masterful story, one that reverberates long after you turn the final page.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateSep 20, 2016
    ISBN9781524723477
    Unavailable
    Reputations
    Author

    Juan Gabriel Vasquez

    Juan Gabriel Vásquez (born 1973) is a Colombian writer, best known for his novel The Sound of Things Falling, originally published in 2011. He studied Latin American literature at the Sorbonne, and has translated works by E. M. Forster and Victor Hugo, amongst others, into Spanish. His previous books have won the IMPAC Award, the Qwerty prize, the Alfaguara Prize and the Gregor von Rezzori Prize, and have been shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and the 2014 IMPAC Prize. His books have been published in sixteen languages and thirty countries. After sixteen years in France, Belgium and Spain, he now lives in Bogota.

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    Reviews for Reputations

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      Reputations is the story of a man who, upon entering his golden years, finds himself forced to examine his life through the lens of one specific choice. It raises complex ethical and philosophical questions but leaves them for the readers to answer. While short, it is both provocative and challenging.I received a complimentary copy of this book via a Goodreads giveaway. Many thanks to all involved in providing me with this opportunity.
    • 4/5
      This is an incredibly intriguing short book. Political cartoonist Javier Mallarino is at the zenith of his career in Bogata, Columbia. He has endured 40 years of political death threats, given up his dream of becoming a serious artist, and lost his wife and daughter who have fled from the man he has become.But now he is being feted and even featured on a new postage stamp.After the ceremony, a woman comes up to him. Was she molested in Mallarino's house 30 years ago when she was a child? Mallarino thought so, and with a political cartoon brought down the accused man, who committed suicide soon afterwards.But what happened that night? What are the responsibilities of power? How true are memories? After all, as the White Queen said to Alice “It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards”.
    • 4/5
      “It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards,” says the White Queen to Alice. In REPUTATIONS, Juan Gabriel Vasquez explores unreliable memories and the lengths we will go to validate them. Javier Mallarino is a living legend in Columbia. As a political cartoonist, he is being honored as the conscience of the nation with his own postal stamp. His successful career rests on a reputation of speaking truth to power. Using his gift for characterization, he has been able to expose Columbian political corruption. People looked forward to his daily cartoons and his targets quickly came to realize that being mawked by Mallarino was a sign of celebrity. His private life is somewhat less successful. He is divorced from Magdalena and estranged from his daughter, Beatrice. Due to constant threats, he has been forced to move from Bogatá to the surrounding mountains. Yet, in the final analysis, Javier enjoys a good life. That is until he receives a visit from a mysterious young woman, Samanta Leal, who intrudes into his lair under the guise of being a journalist seeking an interview. In fact, Samanta was a guest in his house 28 years earlier as a playmate of his daughter. The girls manage to get a little tipsy by finishing off drinks left around at a house party. This leads to the accusation of molestation by another intruder at the party when Samanta’s father arrives to her pick up. Senator Adolfo Cuéllar crashed the party to implore Mallarino to cease his particularly vicious attacks on his character. Instead, the incident has the opposite effect. Mallarino’s chief concern is not the truth so much as using the incident for his next juicy cartoon. Of course, the cartoonist’s approach is not to draw reality, but instead to insinuate character emphasizing physical flaws. “Bones are the only things that matter…Give me a bone and I shall move the world.” In this case, Mallarino suggests that Cuéllar may be a pedophile. This has disastrous consequences for Cuéllar and his family.Samanta is confused by what may or may not have happened at that party 28 years ago and only seeks the truth. Of course, Mallarino really doesn’t know what happened, but the outcome from his attack on Cuéllar has him doubting his own honor and provides the impetus to seek answers, even at the risk of his own reputation. The novel is a subtle exploration of multiple important themes: the precariousness of reputation, the gap between private persona and celebrity, the shadow land between artistic distortion and reality, the unreliability of memory, and the ultimate inability to define the past. Vasquez skillfully handles these themes with controlled plotting, avoidance of didacticism and presentation of realistic and nuanced characters.