by Santiago Gamboa, translated from the Spanish by Howard Curtis (Colombia, Europa Editions)

One of the characters in Return to the Dark Valley is a “crazy and eccentric Argentinian,” a possible sociopath, who says he is the bastard son of Pope Francis and has renamed himself Tertullian, after the father of Latin Christianity. While he narrates sections of the book, he is only a supporting actor in Santiago Gamboa’s complicated plot, a masterpiece of manipulation which unfolds over four hundred and sixty-one pages. Tertullian is one of five different narrators, each with his or her own distinctive voice and history, who provide the many stories which come together to form what we gradually realize is, when distilled down to its essential form, a thriller. Albeit a wonderfully literary one.

At its center is the man known affectionately as “the Consul” who has travelled to Spain at the request of Juana, the woman with whom he has an intimate, yet undefined, relationship. (Both characters appear in an earlier novel by the same author). While waiting for Juana in Madrid he meets another young woman, Manuela, who in an act very like the Catholic sacrament of confession, reveals to him her story. Eventually Tertullian will add his voice to this fragmented tale, as will a priest turned armed militant. And the 19th-century poet Arthur Rimbaud—whose name came up in more than one book eligible for this year’s prize—also plays a part, in the form of meditations kept by the Consul in a notebook. Rimbaud’s biography is spread across the novel and forms its connective tissue.

It seems an unlikely combination. Until you realize they are all expatriates, fleeing or having fled violence at home. Brought together, by way of tenuous connections and a shared human condition, to help Manuela make peace with her own violent past.

Return to the Dark Valley is as close to being a flawless book as anything I’ve ever read. That’s a bold statement, I know—but to find a book that is well made, so solid in its construction, is rare. Gamboa is a writer who has complete control over his medium. Every sentence, nuance and emotional beat carries weight. He’s created characters who are substantial—with identifiable mannerisms, voices, and vocal rhythms. The pacing is absolutely perfect. The violence, and there is more than a little violence, is visceral but not overdone (similar to how it is used in the movie Sicario). The prose is rich, but restrained. Howard Curtis’ translation is a pleasure to read. Below is a quote chosen at random from the many passages I marked while I was reading, just because it felt both beautiful and real.

Waiting, waiting . . .

The day is marked out with floating buoys you have to make an effort to reach: lunch, dinner, sleep, breakfast. Anyone who waits—this text is full of unbearable waits—feels the passing of time and its speed in a physical way. It is slow and laborious.

I don’t know who felt the weight of this stillness most, Manuela or me; what is certain is that by always being in the house—except for my brief morning excursion for provisions, which Manuela denied herself for fear that someone might recognize her—each of us ended up marking our territory, and she practically imprisoned herself in her room.

Challenging. Haunting. Readable. Written by an author and craftsman of undeniable skill, this is a book that expands or contracts in scope depending on its reader. That kind of adaptability and universality in an author—combined with such skillful and creative storytelling—should be celebrated. Which is why I believe Return to the Dark Valley should win.

The entry below is by Jeremy Garber, events coordinator at in Portland, OR.

by Santiago Gamboa, translated from the Spanish by Howard Curtis (Colombia, Europa Editions)

Chad’s Uneducated and Unscientific Percentage Chance of Making the Shortlist: 36%

Chad’s Uneducated and Unscientific Percentage Chance of Winning the BTBA: 4%

Santiago Gamboa’s Night Prayers (Europa Editions) is a thrilling work of fiction. The Colombian writer’s newest novel (only the second of his works to be translated into English, after Necropolis) is layered with international tension and literary allusions. With a globetrotting plot centered upon crime and sibling loyalty, Night Prayers is told from the perspective of three distinct voices (each a main character). Sex, drugs, and politics figure prominently into Gamboa’s story, charging it with nefarious elements that won’t be unfamiliar to readers of Roberto Bolaño.

Perhaps one of the more conventional/less experimental books on this year’s longlist, Night Prayers, nevertheless, stands out boldly as an accomplished work of narrative storytelling. With an electrifying, well-paced plot, Gamboa’s novel engages and entertains like the very best of crime fiction, yet reflects and philosophizes like a more measured literary work. Drawing on themes of brotherly/sisterly fealty, violence, corruption, poverty, and the blurry lines between right and wrong, vice and virtue, Night Prayers is far more than a mere propulsive page-turner of transnational intrigue.

With considerable drama and distinctly drawn characters, Night Prayers hums at the peripheries of an illicit world. Translated from the Spanish by Howard Curtis, Santiago Gamboa’s novel is a worthwhile entrant on this year’s Best Translated Book Award longlist.

What’s interesting/frustrating about this book is that that plot point takes place on page 165, then is interrupted, textually at least, for almost 200 pages as other participants in the conference tell their stories, each of which is intriguing in its own right, but which, for a reader of traditional, conventional books obsessed with pacing, plot points, and building climaxes, must be crazy-making. (But those sorts of readers don’t really read these sorts of books, do they?)

I read this way back in the fall and meant to write up a review back then when all the connections between the various stories in the novel—which, in terms of their themes, ideas, and narrative styles, overlap and play off one another in a beguiling fashion—were still fresh in my mind. Now, I’m just left with the memory that, in contrast to say The Canterbury Tales or The Decameron, this novel is much more circular in its construction, looping back on itself in a way informed by the best of twentieth-century literature.

A lot of people reading this blog probably feel the same way, but god damn is it a good time for Spanish-language literature. Vila-Matas. Gamboa. Neuman. Labbé. Marias. Chejfec. Prieto. Valenzuela. Dozens of writers I can’t think of.

In Spain and Latin America, most of the awards are given out by the publishing companies themselves. The Anagrama Essay Prize. The Planeta Prize. It’s pretty sweet marketing—the book you’re about to publish already won an award. This is what I believe marketing folks call “pre-publication buzz.” Buzz that you the publisher both created and get to reap the rewards of!

This isn’t meant to be facetious, it’s just a different system than our National Book Awards and Pulitzer Prizes. And like with any prize, some of the award-winning French/Spanish books that I’ve read are great, some are mediocre. That’s how it goes.

All this is a long prelude to announcing that yesterday Santiago Gamboa won the La Otra Orilla Literary Award for his novel Necropolis. La Otra Orilla is a literary imprint within Grupo Editorial Norma with an emphasis on Latin American literature. The Prize is awarded by an international jury of famous Spanish novelists (this year, it consisted of Jorge Volpi, Roberto Ampuero, and Pere Sureda), and the winner receives $100,000.

Gamboa is a young Colombian writer that I heard about not too long about, and whose work sounds pretty intriguing. In addition to Necropolis (more on that in a second), he’s the author of Turned Pages, To Lose Is a Question of Method, The Happy Life of a Youth Named Esteban, The Imposters, and Ulysses Syndrome. None of which have been translated into English. Of course. Although they have been translated into French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Greek (Greek!), Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Czech, Russian, Polish, Basque, Rumanian, and Turkish.

He currently lives in New Delhi as the Colombian cultural attache (intriguing) and is considered one of the most innovative voices in new Colombian fiction. Manuel Vazquez Montalban (pretty impressive in his own right) actually declared that “Gamboa is, along with Garcia Marquez, the most important Colombian writer.” And the jury awarded Gamboa this prize for his “magnificent use of language, accomplishing the difficult task of bringing so many different voices to life whilst making each one authentic and unique.”

And here’s the description of Necropolis:

Following a long illness, a writer is invited to a biography conference in Jerusalem where the accounts of the odd lives of the conference participants come as a shock. These include the case of French bookseller and biographer Edgar Miret Supervielle, Italian adult film actress Sabina Vedovelli, and, above all, José Maturana, a former evangelical minister, ex-convict and recovering drug addict who, employing powerful language acquired on the most squalid streets, tells the story of his savior, a charismatic Latino messiah in Miami. Shortly thereafter, Maturana turns up dead in his hotel room. While everything points toward a suicide, certain doubts lie just beneath the surface. Who really was José Maturana?
In Necropolis, the narrator explores different versions of the same story while simultaneously listening to the shocking tales of the other attendees of the conference.

Always hard to tell what a book is like based on brief agent/publisher copy like this, but I’m personally interested in finding out more about Gamboa’s work. I’ve been reading fellow Colombian Juan Gabriel Vasquez’s The Informers (masterfully translated by Anne McLean, and a finalist for this year’s Independent Foreign Fiction Prize), and I’m getting the sense that Colombia has some really interesting young writers . . .