The Informers »

Author Juan Gabriel Vasquez is a critically acclaimed Colombian writer, translator, and award-winning author. Educated in Barcelona and in Paris at the Sorbonne, he now teaches in Barcelona, where he lives with his wife and twin daughters. Anne Mclean's translations of Latin American and Spanish works have been short-listed for the IMPAC prize, won the Premio Valle-Inclán, and twice been awarded the Independent's Foreign Fiction Prize.

When Gabriel Santoro's book is scathingly reviewed by his own father, a famous Bogotá rhetorician, Gabriel is devastated. Cataloguing the life of longtime family friend Sara Guterman, a Jewish German immigrant who escaped to Colombia during the 1930s, Gabriel's book seemed an innocent attempt to preserve a piece of his country's rapidly vanishing past. But as Gabriel pours over his research looking for clues to his father's anger, he discovers a sinister secret locked in the pages. After his father's death, and with the help of Sara Guterman and his father's girlfriend, Angelina, Gabriel peels back layer after shocking layer of family history-from the streets of 1940s Bogotá to a stranger's doorstep in 1990s Medellín-to reveal a hidden portrait of their past-dark, complex, and inescapable.

The New York Times - Larry Rohter

The twin themes of betrayal and atonement in recall Conrad, specifically Under Western Eyes…Two years ago Mr. Vasquez was included on a list of the most "important" Latin American writers under 40, nominated by more than 2,000 authors, literary agents, librarians, editors and critics. The Informers alone justifies their choice, given its challenging subject and psychological depth