This book bored me. ( )

The Informers is Columbian author Juan Gabriel Vasquez first novel. It is a novel of two time frames and tells how German/Jewish immigrants to Columbia who fled the Nazi dictatorship in the late 1930's were treated with suspicion and then hostility by their Columbian hosts. There was a blacklist issued by the U.S.A. which made it impossible for those listed to earn a living, funds and property were seized and many were detained in make-ship hotel/prisons. The second time frame is the 1990's when the children of those immigrants are suffering for the guilt of their fathers who may have connived to get old enemies included on the blacklist.

The novel takes the form of a mystery as Gabriel Santoro a journalist tries to unravel the past. He has written a book about Sara: a Jewish survivor from the period, but from the reaction of his own father to it's publication he begins to realise that there is much that he has missed in his story. The book then takes us back to the war years and gives us Sara's story in her POV and in effect we are reading the book that Santoro has written. The mystery slowly unfolds, but one of the main themes of the novel is the inaccuracy of memories, either from forgetfulness or a more deliberate attempt to bury the actions of the past. Santoro questions his own role as a journalist/author and realises how the past particularly his fathers actions have affected his own life. The mystery becomes his mystery the guilt is his guilt.

Once again the setting in Bogota and then in Medellin is carefully crafted and after reading a couple of Vasquez books I am certainly aware of the geography of the country and its politics and have more than a vague idea of the journey between rainy misty Bogota and hot sweltering Medellin. There are plenty of similarities between Vasquez later novel [The Sound of Things Falling] and The Informers; both do an excellent job of weaving Columbia's turbulent history in with the plot and the characterisations, both are concerned with uncovering crimes from the past and how these affect the current generation, journals and letters from the past provide key pieces of information and the reliability of memory and artefacts are questioned.

A good novel, but if you have already read [The Sound of Things Falling] you might not want to revisit some of the same ground, however if you enjoyed either one of the novels then the chances are you will like them both. I have read two novels by Vasquez and as it is my turn to chose out next reads for the book club I will not be choosing a third by him. 3.5 stars. ( )

The Informers by Juan Gabriel Vasquez

A novel set in Columbia during the outbreak of WW II when a significant number of German immigrants were blacklisted, forced to give up their occupations, businesses and normal lifestyles. Many were forced inland, away from the coast where they might be of greater menace.

The book relates the story of Gabriel Santoro a University professor and commentator, highly respected by all. Years later his son, a journalist, writes a book about his family friend, Sara Guterman, herself the daughter of Jewish immigrants who successfully built an exclusive hotel. In retelling her life, the son Santoro, unwittingly reveals how his father informed on his German friends.

One particular family, close friends, the Deressers, find their lives destroyed. The father, Konrad, is sent away to a hotel prison, the mother leaves Bogota to start a new life never to be seen again, and likewise their son, Enrique, leaves for Medellin where he, too, starts a new life.

Years later Gabriel Santoro, Jr. and Enrigue Deresser meet up and together seek amends.

The truth though is brutal. An informer can never be forgiven and it is the elder Santoro’s self imposed guilt that eventually results in a fatal car accident ending his own life.

The writing is at times mysterious and one gets a real sense of Columbia at a given time; its peoples, its politics and its geography. A very well written engrossing novel. ( )

Juan Gabriel Vásquez makes his title plural, because the informers are everywhere in this interesting and self-reflective novel. The author plays himself, so to speak, in writing this book, and the narrative taking up the first three quarters poses as a book which has been published. However, there is very nearly nothing we can consider meta-fictional here; Sr. Vásquez plays this very straight. The result is entertaining, thought-provoking, and full of cautionary lessons.

Sr. Vásquez uses the voice of a Colombian journalist who has written a book about the life of Sara, his immigrant friend. Sara moved to Bogotá in 1938 from Germany with her prosperous Jewish family, and has lived there ever since. She became friends with Gabriel Santoro, prominent attorney and language professor. Santoro’s son, also called Gabriel, is our narrator-journalist. Santoro senior reads his son’s book and writes a prompt and excoriating review. We very gradually learn the reasons for the hostility, and they stem from the elder man’s guilt about something he apparently said about an acquaintance, an immigrant man from Germany, during World War II. He informed. The result is a blacklisting of the acquaintance-victim, Konrad Deresser, who is detained, imprisoned, loses his family and his business, and at war’s end, commits suicide.

This bit of character assassination starts the dominoes falling, and it takes more than fifty years for all the effects to be felt.

The author takes up the immorality of calumny very effectively: the perpetrator destroys his victim, and lives with his guilt for decades. Even as he becomes a prominent professor and rhetorician, his words and his acquaintances betray him. Eventually we aren’t sure whether he’s killed himself or not. The moral territory is crystal clear and the language engaging and seamlessly translated. This book abounds in subtleties: the snitch becomes a jurist-rhetorician; the son becomes a truth-seeking journalist who inadvertently brings ruin to the father. Well-written and throught-provoking.

http://bassoprofundo1.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-informers-by-juan-gabriel-vasquez... ( )