TRANSLATOR’S NOTE
I would like to thank Bill Swainson for his unerring eye and ear, his encouragement, patience and inspiration during the translation of this and quite a few other books over the last decade and a half.
AM
A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR
Juan Gabriel Vásquez was born in Bogotá in 1973. 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 Dublin Literary Award, the Alfaguara Prize, the Gregor von Rezzori Prize, the Prix Roger Caillois and he has been shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. Reputations was awarded the Royal Spanish Academy Prize in 2014. His books have been published in twenty-six languages and forty countries. After sixteen years in France, Belgium and Spain, he now lives in Bogotà.
A NOTE ON THE TRANSLATOR
Anne McLean has translated works by many Spanish and Latin American authors including Héctor Abad, Javier Cercas, Carmen Martín Gaite, Julio Cortázar, Ignacio Martínez de Pisón, Enrique Vila-Matas and Tomás Eloy Martínez. Novels she has translated have been awarded the Premio Valle Inclán, the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. She lives in Toronto.