Necropolis

by Santiago Gamboa, Howard Curtis (Translator)

Viewed as one of "the most important Colombian writers" (Manuel Vázquez Montalbán) today, Santiago Gamboa showcases throughout his first novel Necropolis the talent and inventiveness that have earned him a reputation as one of the leading figures in his generation of Latin American authors. 

Upon recovering from a prolonged illness, an author is invited to a literary gathering in Jerusalem that turns out to be a most unusual affair. In the conference rooms of a luxury hotel, as war rages outside, he listens to a series of extraordinary life stories: the saga of a chess-playing duo, the tale of an Italian porn star with a socialist agenda, the drama of a Colombian industrialist who has been waging a longstanding battle with local paramilitaries, and many more. But it is José Maturana—evangelical pastor, recovering drug addict, ex-con—with his story of redemption at the hands of a charismatic tattooed messiah from Miami, Florida, who fascinates the author more than any other. Maturana's language is potent and vital, and his story captivating. 

Hours after his stirring presentation to a rapt audience, however, Maturana is found dead in his hotel room. At first it seems likely that Maturana has taken his own life. But there are a few loose ends that don't support the suicide hypothesis, and the author-invitee, moved by Maturana's life story to discover the truth about his death, will lead a search that drives the entire plot of this chimerical novel beyond the action-filled investigation and to a thought that resonates universally. 

WINNER OF THE 2009 LA OTRA ORILLA LITERARY AWARD

Genres: Fiction, Novels, Latin American, Literary Fiction, Spanish Literature, Mystery, Literature

483 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Born at Bogotá, he studied literature at the Javerian University of Bogotá. He travelled to Spain where he remained until 1990 and graduated in Hispanic Philology at the University of Alcalá de Henares. He then moved to Paris, where he studied Cuban Literature at the Sorbonne.

He made his debut as a novelist with Páginas de vuelta (1995), a work which established him as one of the most innovative voices of the new Colombian narrative; later he wrote Perder es cuestión de método (1997), which was internationally acclaimed, and has been translated into 17 lenguages, and about which a film is now being made, and Vida feliz de un joven llamado Esteban (2000), a novel which has added to his international prestige. He is the author of the travel book Octubre en Pekín (2001). As a journalist, he has been a contributor to the Latin American Service of Radio France International in Paris, a correspondent of El Tiempo of Bogotá, and columnist on the magazine Cromos. He is now residing in Rome.

Reviews

[Glenn Russell]

Brazilian author Márcio Souza's Death Squeeze is one of the most gripping, fiercely compelling Latin American thrillers you will ever read. Much the same could be said for Santiago Gamboa's Necropolis. However, unlike Souza's novel and nearly all other thrillers where we follow the main character in one arc of action from first page to last, the Colombian author's 466-page novel shifts away from the prime narrative, a first-person account of a writer attending a literary conference, by inserting four novella-length tales delivered by various participants at the conference. What's truly remarkable is that Santiago Gamboa's storytelling is so absorbing and fascinating that even with the novella-length tales inserted, Necropolis maintains the drive of a traditional thriller. If you want to read a work of Latin American literature that will keep you turning those pages deep into the night, this is your book.

It can't be emphasized enough: Necropolis is a storytelling extravaganza. Santiago Gamboa's ability to create captivating, memorable stories as if a magician effortlessly performing an array of mesmerizing tricks reminds me of another Brazilian author, Moacyr Scliar, especially in his novella, The Short-Story Writers, where Scliar spins out dozens of cameos about short story writers, my three favorite: Otaviano wrote his short stories in public toilets, where they appeared in the form of graffiti on the walls; Luis Ernesto would mimeograph his short stories, which he would then hand out at the gates of soccer stadiums; Auro coated the pages of his short-stories with hallucinogenic substances so his stories would cause erratic visions. Only with Santiago Gamboa, each story stretches across numerous pages and contains a cornucopia of vibrant and immersive detail.

On the opening pages, we are introduced to an unnamed narrator, a gent I'll call Bo since he appears to share much in common with Gamboa—a Colombian writer residing in Rome. Bo recently recovered from a prolonged illness caused by Hantavirus, which had debilitated him for over two years. Unexpectedly, Bo receives an invitation to the International Conference on Biography and Memory (ICBM) in Jerusalem, despite never having written anything resembling a biography or autobiography. Suspecting a mistake, he expresses his doubts to the conference officials. To his surprise, they respond warmly, assuring him of his welcome and even providing brief descriptions of the participants: a Hungarian antiquarian, a French bibliophile, a black author from the island of Santa Lucia, an Italian porn actress, a Colombian historian, and a former evangelical pastor, convict, and drug addict. Intrigued by the prospect of attending this conference, Bo becomes excited and sets out on his journey.

However, Bo is in for a shocker when he finally arrives in Jerusalem and travels to the King David Hotel, the site of the conference. “There were trenches and checkpoints on all sides, armed men, machine gun nests, barbed wire, sandbags on the balconies, walls with holes in them, structures of scorched steel, concrete blackened by the explosions.” Given the daunting sight before him, one might assume that Bo would forget about the conference and immediately head back to the airport. The answer to why he persists may be linked to his observation, “The storekeepers had lowered their metal shutters and there was not a soul on the sidewalks. The fear was palpable, but that somehow made the sense of life seem even stronger.” Ah, the intensity of life, bringing to mind the wisdom of Joseph Campbell when he observes that, above all else, people want to feel fully alive. The ongoing war, with no clear indication of who the fighters are or the reasons for the conflict, permeates the atmosphere and greatly influences everyone associated with the conference.

The novel's Part One features alternating chapters, clicking back and forth between Bo's narrative and the saga of José Maturana where we're given the details of José's sordid life as a down and out drug addict sent to Moundsville Penitentiary in West Virginia where he meets Reverend Walter de la Salle and begins his second life as a follower of Christ. Bo takes a keen interest in the imposing presence of José Maturana but then the news in the concluding pages of this first part: José Maturana is found dead in the bathtub of his hotel room, an apparent suicide.

Suicide, really? Bo turns detective and takes steps to discover the truth, a narrative picked up in the third and concluding part of Necropolis. But first there are three presenters giving their lengthy talks in Part Two: the history of two expert chess players, a Latin American tale of revenge, the life and tribulations of a porn star.

Santiago Gamboa's fiction is know for exploring themes of identity, personal transformation, exile, migration, extreme violence – and redemption. Necropolis certainly covers all these themes in colorful, outlandish, sometimes sleazy detail, a novel not for prudes or those readers easily offended. I'll let the author have the last words, words spoken by Bo to a beautiful young woman, a journalist from Iceland -

“That's fine, Marta, I understand you...you'll be part of that smaller stream of contrary immigrants, those who go from the north and its wealth to lose themselves in the tropics or the deserts or the jungles of the south, you see, that demonstrates that paradise isn't in any one place and everyone paints it with the color of his own needs, because you have to be aware of the fact that this boring, predictable, overprotected life you curse is the dream of millions of poor Africans, Asians, and Latin Americans; the dream of all those who see their children die of typhoid or malaria in the slums of Khartoum or Dar Es Salaam, the young people who fall asleep in their rickshaws in broad daylight because of malnutrition in New Delhi; the dream of those who grow up without schools or health and have to make do later on with picking up a rifle or a package of drugs in Burma or Liberia or Colombia; the dream of those who, because of poverty, lose their humanity and are capable of cutting throats, decapitating, lopping off arms and legs, castrating.”



Colombian author Santiago Gamboa, born 1965

[Evi * · Rating 2 out of 5]

Decamerone contemporaneo di cui non colgo il senso.
Se volete leggere di una accolita di biografi riuniti per un congresso letterario al King David Hotel in una instabile Gerusalemme, di un carismatico pastore new age che per il troppo successo da proseliti perde la testa e la cui spiritualità diventa più carnale di una fiorentina al sangue, di due amici appassionati di scacchi, di come si diventa una pornostar e si vive da pornostar e di altre variegate storie, allora leggetelo.

Altrimenti non fatelo, che è meglio, intanto perché è eccessivamente lunghetto, 363 pagine non sono poche, è scritto in maniera ordinaria; per risollevare (ma senza riuscirci) l’interesse l’autore ha anche infilato un omicidio che non guasta mai, malizioso espediente per creare dipendenza nel lettore che è lì per lì per darsi alla fuga.
Libro scacciapensiero, a volte alla lettura si chiede solo questo e di questo si ha bisogno.
Io però l’ho abbandonato a pagina 275, senza rimpianti.

[Chad Post · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has an interesting structure that is destined to frustrate a great number of readers . . . The first 150-or-so pages of the book set up the main plot: the narrator (a famous Colombian author living in Italy, just like Gamboa) attends a conference on biography taking place in Jerusalem. Interspersed among his chapters about the conference are three long(ish) chapters representing one Jose Manturana's talk at the conference about the "Ministry of Mercy," an evangelical church that, according to Jose, falls apart because of the founder's addictions to sex and drugs. The Ministry burns down in a raid, the founder vanishes forever.

Shortly after giving his speech, Jose is found dead in his hotel room, which seemingly sets the novel's plot into motion. Was this really a suicide? Who was trying to call Jose right before he died? Who left him the message, "We've found you"? Who is the we? Who was arguing in the room right above the narrator's head? So many question that are then interrupted by Part Two, another 150-page section, this time featuring conference speeches from three other side-characters: Edgar Miret Supervielle (who represents the stereotypical annoyingly desperate author), Moises Kaplan (who tells a story of betrayal and revenge set in Latin America and modeled after "The Count of Monte Cristo"), and port starlet Savina Vedovelli (whose erotic biography is promised earlier on in the book and almost represents a sort of wink from Gamboa himself, promising salacious fun if you bear with the "digressions").

Once the reader returns to what was set up as the initial plot, the nature of this tricksy, reflective book has changed dramatically. It's not a book about a murder mystery, it's a book about biography and representation, a book that evolves into a sort of fun house, with themes (revenge, power, lies, ambition) reflecting off one another in stories that are sometimes portrayed as stories, sometimes as the truth, calling into question the nature of biography and narrative--the goal of the fictional conference around which this book is set.

Very learned, this novel is constructed like a bit of a puzzle (I may be off base here, but one character's name--Egiswanda--seems like it could be an intentional anagram of either "Adages Win" or "Ideas Gnaw" or "Gained Was"), and is a great place to get lost in. Would be perfect to use in a college course, since it is knotted together in a very readable way, and opens up to a lot of typical college lit type of questions. (It's more interesting than that though, I swear.)

[Timothy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nothing is more amusing than reading reviews of this book written by people who are thoroughly maddened and confused that there is no "plot" or not sure what the author is "trying to tell them". The lowered standards of literacy due to the mass age of mass books for mass readers has never been more perfectly exposed. Not every "novel" functions like something written by Stephen Fucking King...

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has an interesting structure, it is four different stories tied together by a single plot (some might question my use of the P-word here). Three portions of one story are separated by some elements of the overall plot development. Each of the other three are presented as smaller, single pieces

Circumstances addressed, with significant warfare (Jerusalem under attack) in the immediate background, include religious revivalism (USA), political corruption (Columbia), cross dressing (Europe), and pornographic cinema (all over). There is a plot, but I won’t go into that.

I, with at least one other reader, was left questioning what it was all about. If I hadn’t come away with that question, I’d give it a fifth star. As it is, four stars for very good writing and keeping my interest.

[Robbie Bruens]

Necropolis is a novel of astonishing intelligence, imagination, and insight. With this book, Santiago Gamboa quickly ascends to my pantheon of literary gods alongside Bolaño and Borges. Gamboa definitely fits into the same literary tradition, with the influence of Bolaño in particular very present in the style and content of this book, though it by no means feels like a copycat, quite the contrary in fact - Necropolis is its own sexy animal. What I mean to say is if you like those aforementioned authors, read this novel like right now!

But before getting into more detail regarding the book's many estimable facets, I wonder if you'll allow me a brief digression into the etiology of discovering a new author or book. I first encounter many of the books I end up reading via the recommendations of friends and acquaintances, or the digital recommendations provided by the Internet and its many websites, or a title appears in another book I'm reading, or I was assigned the book in school, back when I was in school. But sometimes my first encounter with a book is a little bit less deliberate, a little more random. Such was the case with Necropolis, which I first noticed on the shelves of many of my favorite book stores in the SF Bay Area around two years ago (not long after it was first translated into English, I would guess). The cover and especially the title immediately drew my eye, and the name of the author sounded Spanish enough that I jumped to the (fair, in retropect) conclusion that he might be in good company with Roberto Bolano, an author I was falling in love with at the time. These mainly superficial factors were enough to seduce my imagination and my bibliophilic desires, but not enough to get me to actually buy the damn thing even though I wanted to every single time I saw it.

Time passed, or at least I perceived it passing, even if the finest physicists and philosophers say that time doesn't literally pass per se, and I found myself in Colombia, frequenting the book stores of Bogota. It was there I rediscovered the allure of Santiago Gamboa's name, and realized that he was in fact Colombian. While staying in Medellin I decided I should read something written by a contemporary Colombian author, and Necropolis by Santiago Gamboa seemed like a natural choice. I downloaded a preview of it on my Kindle, a machine I had so far mainly used to download and read free public domain works (mostly the classics of U.S. and British letters that I had missed in school). The preview confirmed my hopes for the book, and I made a rare purchase from the Kindle store. I hope some of the money gets to Gamboa, his translator, and his publishers though I'm sure a good portion will drain in rivulets to the pockets of Amazon shareholders.

I indulged in typing up this somewhat mundane story of how I came to read this book because Necropolis is very much about storytelling and in particular the kind of storytelling that stretches between continents. The book's main setting is Jerusalem, though significant portions of it take place in Colombia, the United States, France, and Italy with briefer sections set in Sweden, Poland, Switzerland, and Kenya. What's remarkable is that in spite of all the globetrotting and endless digressions, the novel feels coherent, unified, and of a single whole. It could have something to with Ebenezer, a chicken sandwich, and a Diet Coke, but of that I'm not sure.

The funniest moments come near the beginning of the book including a moment or two when I laughed so hard that hot tears streamed down my cheeks. But Gamboa's wit is present throughout, allowing the reader to breath despite all the pages spent in an atmosphere of fetid darkness redolent of human misery. But what colorful, diverse misery! All the misery of life, and therefore misery that is more complicated than the word alone lets on. This is as vibrant a complex of interconnected stories as you're likely to find anywhere. It's sly and playful and pornographic and grotesque and gorgeous sometimes within a single sentence. I'm going to try to wrap this up though I have much more to say. In short, Necropolis is a structurally adventurous dance through a multifarious plethora of subjects and locales, incisively exploring the seductive allure of charismatic Religious leaders, the grim hopelessness of war and human conflict, the divergence of privilege enjoyed in the separate worlds of the Global North and Global South, the uninhibited (yet somehow lurid and compulsive and maybe a little revolting) pleasures of sex and literature, the nasty creepy topsy turvy horrors of corruption and authoritarianism, and if you can believe it, a whole lot more. Boy, I wish I could deploy commas with the shameless grace of Santiago Gamboa. I remove my hat in honor of this book, please, if you've read all this - read Necropolis!

[Richard · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a maddening book.

Once, a reporter asked Bob Dylan what one of his songs was about. Dylan replied that it was about 7 minutes. Necropolis is about 466 pages, that I'm sure of, what the author is trying to tell me, I'm not so sure.

Mr. Gamboa had me a good deal of the time. The set up was interesting - an invitation to a conference of biographers extended to a writer who was not a biographer, and who had not written anything in two years, but as all travel and accommodations were included, it was an offer that couldn't be refused. So, off we go to Jerusalem in a state of war, but not before we get the story of a Christ figure of the streets who builds a multi-million dollar mission from scratch, serving the poorest of the poor. We're going to hear more about this guy as his story in the hinge that is supposed to hold the book together as his disciple and amanuensis tells his side of the story. But before that happens we're going to get quite a few asides about literary conferences and the types of authors who tend to be habitues - including a perfect satirical rendering of a Salman Rushdie type, who may or may not be Salman Rushdie because the character is misnamed though that may be a strategy, but perhaps not. See, it's a literary conference and is full of in-jokes, literary puzzles, and semiotic nonsense that starts out amusing, but gets to be tiresome.

The saving grace is that we also get stories from three other guests of honor. The stories, and especially the first of the three are masterpieces of short fiction, and the first of the three is worth the price of admission. As ambivalent as I feel about the book as a whole, that story is a hum-dinger. The second story is good, the third, the autobiography of an artistically inclined porn-goddess and her empire lost me in its burlesque, but was still a good read; and the retelling of the Christ figure's story is compelling. But then the whole enterprise goes helter-skelter and the book falls off its hinge with a suicide, amateur detective work, any number of blow jobs, pages of incomprehensible philosophical babble while the hotel (the King David btw) is being bombed to rubble, and a denouement that makes no sense at all.

And why all this is a city of the dead is not clear to me at all.

Why three stars? Because I liked it until I didn't, because it was amusing until it wasn't, and because just because I ultimately didn't get it doesn't necessarily mean there's nothing to get.

See what I mean? About 466 pages.

[Theresa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I tried to save finishing this book for as long as possible. It's a story about stories and I just wanted to keep reading it and meeting new characters forever.

[João Sá Nogueira Rodrigues · Rating 3 out of 5]

A história em si até tem a sua graça...Nesse ponto acho que até chegaria bem às 4 estrelas! Também a forma como a história é contada,em que as personagens ao relatarem as suas vidas acabam por mostrar a "teia" que as une a todas é realmente bem pensada e este ponto atingia facilmente as 4 estrelas (a raiar as 5)!Mas dei 3 estrelas principalmente por uma razão: a quantidade exagerada de palavrões! Sinceramente se foi uma tentativa de realismo, resvalou para o exagero... Não acho que houvesse necessidade de tantas asneiras e palavrões... Aliás, tantas que acabam por cortar o próprio ritmo da história! Não estarei a exagerar se disser que se fossem retiradas todas essas palavras de vernáculo (para não repetir o que realmente são: asneiras e palavrões) desapareciam umas boas dezenas de páginas do livro!Este ponto acabou por ser cansativo, porque é realmente exagerado e desnecessário para a história! Daí as 3 estrelas!

[Dennis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice try but no cigar here. This is a book full of so many clever things - for this, the three stars - but ultimately ended up a bit tedious for me - for this, no more than three. What I most enjoyed were the humor, such as the send-up of the porno film industry where we end up with politically-correct, socialist porn. There are the inside jokes on various famous writers such as Bolaño and an Israeli-Jewish writer named Amos Roth, one of many men named Amos in this book set in a war-zone Jerusalem which more closely resembles Bosnia. Finally, there are the repeating gags where each story told, including the main body of the novel, has a character named Ebenezer. There are so many tasty tidbits in this book that I began to wonder why it was tedious for me but ultimately it was because there were too many balls to juggle here, so many that the writer wasn't up to the task. It starts out as a writers' conference in a Jerusalem under attack by rebel fighters while being staved off by government troops but involves into an investigation into the mysterious death of one of the participants, an investigation led by an exiled male Colombian writer and an Icelandic female reporter. lots of comic sexual activity all around, including in the stories, so much that you wonder if this is moving the plot along at times or is just another gratuitous idea gumming up the works. This book was in no way offensive, more bawdy, but there were just too many ideas swimming around here for the whole thing to hold together for me.

[Caroline · Rating 3 out of 5]

Parts is parts.

Gamboa assembles several stories under the umbrella of a recuperating author’s experience at a conference without a discipline, set in a Jerusalem under fire. But to me, each of the stories was an assembly of events that didn’t build on each other or add up to anything, and the stories didn’t really add up to a larger whole either. There include: a Count of Monte Cristo tale involving corrupt paras in Columbia, an entrepreneurial, reputedly resiliant porn acress who argues her films exemplify leftist intellectual theory and who refers to ‘semantic field’ in negotiating a film’s title, a semi-corrupt religious cult in Miami, and other narratives, meant to be variously ironic or outrageous, in the sense of making the reader outraged at the state of the world, especially at the first world. One story, though, is appealing; it involves two chess players who are at peace with being second rate but in touch with the world--sort of an anti-‘The Loser’.

The writing, however, is flat and very much the same from one storyteller to the next, although some minor surface differences in voice exist. The satire is rather cliched. The final heavy-handed debate between Marta and the narrator about living an authentic life in a first or a third world country is less than nuanced. In short, it wasn’t worth the time invested.

[Manuel Gómez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Leí esta novela por primera vez en enero del año 2010. Para mí fue una novela determinante en mi encuentro con la literatura. Creo que marcó un hito, y me permitió conocer la obra de Gamboa, pero también empezar a buscar autores y a leer literatura con fascinación. Decidí leerla para iniciar este año y evaluarla a través del tiempo y de las lecturas que he hecho. Y me volvió a gustar. Creo que Gamboa construye el contexto perfecto para desarrollar una serie de historias marcadas por la desgracia, pero también por la redención y le brinda al lector distintas voces, con distintos motivos, intereses e ideas. El mayor logro de la novela es hacer verosímiles las voces y el escenario en el que ellas se expresan. Tal vez el desarrollo de la historia marco, la que agrupa todas las otras historias, sea el que un final más débil tiene. Si bien la redención hace parte de cada una de las historias expuestas, creo que la forma en la que concluye la novela no le hace justicia ni al personaje principal, ni a la manera en que se fueron dando los pasos para llegar allí. Pero en su conjunto es una novela que se disfruta.

[Stacia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not even sure what I think of it. It's a relatively long & meandering book with stylistic touches reminiscent of both The Decameron & The Canterbury Tales. Some of the tales & digressions are more interesting than others. There are various tales but, ultimately, there is an overall story arc that is completed. And, there are many, many literary references & tips of the hat woven throughout the book. Reading some other reviews of this book made me realize that it is part of a newer Latin American literary genre classified as McOndo (a riff on Macondo, the fictional town in GGM's One Hundred Years of Solitude), a style of writing by Latin American writers who are wanting to escape the overall prevalence & expectation that magical realism be an integral part of the story.

A solid 3 stars.

[Robert Stewart · Rating 5 out of 5]

The entire plot and structure of Necropolis is storytelling--stories about memory, faith, recovery, war, betrayal, revenge, and no small amount of eroticism, being told by and to the delegates of a conference held in a hotel in war torn Jerusalem. It seems like a loaded, preachy setting, but somehow Gamboa keeps it free ideology and agenda, allowing the stories and the characters who tell them and listen to them to carry the plot and the action. A remarkable novel, made even more so by Howard Curtis' excellent translation from the Spanish.

[Annie Primera · Rating 1 out of 5]

No, de verdad no. No hay nada en todo este maldito libro que se pueda salvar.

[Marina Horvat · Rating 1 out of 5]

Oh, look at me how smart I am. Look at me, I know how to write trendy book. I have all in it, Jews, transvestites, prostitutes, gays, I have everything. Why nobody likes me, I want you all to like me!
Book with everything, worth nothing. Waste of time. Shameful, because he obviously knows to write, as person, he's 0. He hasn't got his own opinion about anything at all. He's like child who wants to be friend with everybody, but instead, he's bullied.

[Professor Weasel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dragged a bit at the end - I wonder if the author had trouble figuring out how to finish it? It definitely had a... WEIRD ending. But I loved this. Love the Canterbury Tales-style set-up of everyone telling each other stories at a conference. Loved the international flavor and settings. Loved the "Conte of Monte Cristo"-style tale about Colombia, and the Italian/Mexican porn actress making Marxist porn films, and the Cuban criminal, reformed as evangelical minister's assistant, reformed as famous author. And the mercenary (I don't even remember where he was from - Israel?) trapped at the bottom of the well. And the sex-crazed Icelandic reporter (too over the top? Not for me!). I loved all the griminess and sordidness and apocalyptic imagery and the long breathless energetic sentences. Really wish I could write this guy! Probably some people won't like this coz they will b like "ew it is too basic and too genreish" but I am like... ME GUSTA MUCHO.

[Garrett Rowlan · Rating 4 out of 5]

this book took several months to read. It is discursive and best enjoyed in small bits as I took it. One other note, I read the final chapters as the Israel-Hamas war began which added a note of interest to this tale that takes place in war-soaked Jerusalem.

[Ricardo Lourenço · Rating 5 out of 5]

“As vidas são como as cidades: se são limpas e ordenadas, não têm história. É na desgraça e na destruição que surgem as melhores.”

E é na desgraça e destruição que têm origem as diferentes histórias que constituem Necrópole. Histórias de desgraça e destruição, mas também histórias de resistência e perseverança, de vícios irrefreáveis e paixões reprimidas, que nos enriquecem como só as histórias da vida o podem fazer.
O romance tem início em Roma, onde um escritor Colombiano recupera de um período de doença prolongada, quando é surpreendido por um convite para um congresso dedicado à biografia, em Jerusalém. Tendo abandonado a escrita durante o seu período de convalescença (“é mais fácil prescindir do que ainda não existe nem tem forma”) e sendo a sua obra constituída essencialmente por ficção, o escritor encara o convite como um engano mas, após confirmação por parte dos organizadores do congresso, acaba por aceitar a proposta, entusiasmado pela oportunidade de se libertar do marasmo que o rodeia desde que adoeceu.

“A grandeza, em termos clássicos, pareceu-lhe uma prisão. Então, dedicou-se às coisas simples, que era um modo de dizer: à vida feliz.”

Jerusalém, devastada pela guerra, revela-se um palco bastante apropriado para o congresso, alimentando um confronto constante entre a realidade e a ficção, que incita os participantes do congresso (e o leitor) a questionarem-se acerca do poder efectivo das palavras, cuja importância parece desvanecer-se perante a proximidade de tamanho sofrimento.
A partir do início do congresso a narrativa principal é interrompida pelas diversas histórias relatadas pelos oradores convidados: o primeiro é José Maturana, ex-toxicodependente, que conta como conheceu o reverendo Walter de la Salle e o acompanhou durante o crescimento da sua influência, assim como na queda do seu império; segue-se o biógrafo francês Supervielle Miret, que apresenta a história de dois xadrezistas unidos pela amizade e pelo gosto das coisas simples; o empresário colombiano Moisés Kaplan opta por uma versão moderna de O Conde de Monte Cristo, protagonizada por um compatriota; finalmente, Sabina Vedovelli, actriz porno, expõe a sua vida, explicando o sucesso da sua carreira e a sua ambição em mudar o mundo através da arte.
É nestas histórias que a qualidade da escrita de Gamboa se evidencia. A linguagem e a estratégia que cada um dos oradores emprega para prender a atenção da assistência são perfeitamente adequadas; vozes bastante distintas mas, apesar disso, igualmente cativantes. Esta variedade resulta num arriscado mas bem-sucedido equilíbrio, que acaba por compensar a inevitável fragmentação de um romance que é composto por narrativas vagamente ligadas por algumas ideias comuns.

“Tudo isto, disse Momo, não é mais que a entrada nesse lugar que desde aqui não se pode ver, mas está lá em baixo, o vale de Josefat, de onde soaram as Trompetas do Juízo Final, pois esta cidade, no fundo, está feita para a morte. De todos por igual. Por isso é a grande necrópole do Oriente e do Ocidente.”

Gamboa não se coíbe de descrever a desolação causada pela guerra, cenas de sexo, violência ou consumo de drogas, em parte para chocar o leitor, mas acima de tudo para apresentar uma realidade que é fácil esquecer tal o distanciamento entre os países mais desenvolvidos e o resto do mundo, ou até mesmo entre diferentes classes sociais. Uma realidade que, mesmo quando não é esquecida, é muitas vezes deturpada de modo a servir interesses políticos. Assim, Necrópole é um exemplo de como a literatura pode ser preponderante contra a desinformação, abrindo os olhos dos leitores para a miséria humana que permeia a nossa sociedade como só um bom livro pode fazer.

“Vir a um lugar como este é um modo de despertar por completo, abrir os olhos e, uma vez bem abertos, não se pode permitir que se fechem; na periferia dos nossos belos países há um aterrador mundo exterior repleto de vida, um sol negro que se estende por vários continentes e que, após o primeiro impacto, revela a sua beleza. O que se vê na superfície é horrível e cruel, mas lentamente emerge a beleza; no nosso mundo, pelo contrário, a superfície é bela e tudo esplende, mas com o tempo o que se manifesta é o horror.”

[Joe Cummings · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Necropolis, “ a translation by Howard Curtis of Necrópolis by the Columbian writer Santiago Gamboa , is a strange book indeed, especially when you consider that it is the first of Gamboa’s work to be published in English. What launched its publication was its winning the La Otra Orilla Literary Award in 2009. At that point Gamboa was [and still is] considered an important writer in the new McOndo school of Latin American writing. Although some of his works are available in translation in seventeen other languages, this is his first novel that has been translated into English.
Basically, it is the story of a writer [the narrator] who attends an academic conference on biography at the King Davis Hotel in Jerusalem. The city is caught in a battle between the dividing political and religious forces of the time. So in the middle of the death, dying and destruction that occurs in a war zone an academic meeting on the study of life is convened.
At the meeting are the usual intellectual types that normally are found at such literary events, but there also are some unusual attendees as well, including an ex-con religious leader and an Italian porn star. This is reminiscent of the “Decameron” or “Canterbury Tales” where a group of people are isolated together each with his own tale to tell.
Actually, such literary references abound throughout the novel. Gamboa like the Jorge Luis Borges is a philologist, and like Borges, Gamboa has seeded his text with false and real literary references from Uriah Heep to Simonides for his readers to find. He also sometimes not too subtly lifts plot lines from classics like Alexandre Dumas’ “The Count of Monte Cristo.”
After the first day of the conference, one of the attendees dies under mysterious circumstances, and the narrator sets out determine the real reasons for his demise. As he searches for answers regarding the suicide or murder of his co-participant, the conference continues while the war outside rages on and grows closer and closer to the King David and the meeting.
Necropolis has been compared favorably with Roberto Bolaño’s “Savage Detectives.” [One of Gamboa’s first literary references is a tip of the hat to the great Chilean/Mexican writer.] And the book is clearly in the new McOndo style. Most of the characters are very cosmopolitan Latin Americans moving around on a global stage. Still Bolaño’s work was grittier and more realistic, and the ending of “Detectives” was more satisfying-at least for me. “Necropolis’ ends on a dark and stormy night which may be Columbian’s last joke with the reader. Still, “Necropolis” is a very good book. The narrative quickly captures and maintains the reader’s interest, and the story flows despite the biographical interruptions of the participants at the conference. Indeed these narrative detours are in themselves interesting. I look forward to reading more by Santiago Gamboa.

[Christian · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book really got me thinking: what does it mean to say a novel is "dreamlike"? Necropolis does feel like a series of strange dreams, but this is not the florid psychotropic dream-world of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, this is more like Borges or even Kafka, a maddening dream where the same things keep happening, and everything seems fraught with some significance that hangs just outside the reach of your understanding. A dream where when you wake up you're not sure how you would explain it to someone else, or if it would even be a good idea to try.

One part of the dreamlike quality of Necropolis comes from its lyrical, flowing sentences, translated from Spanish by Howard Curtis, who has brought along much of the musicality that must have been in the original. Another part of that quality might be the similarities the story has to a fable or myth. In the novel, an aging writer, recently recovered from a long illness, attends a conference on biography in a war-torn Jerusalem, where a series of mysterious and bizarre characters tell the stories of their lives, stories that intertwine and reflect on one another in strange, startling ways.

The whole setup screams "allegory" and "symbolism", but nothing so heavy-handed is to be found here. Instead we have more unsettling dreams: dialogues between war-orphaned scholars and expansive meditations on the meanings of narrative and life, interspersed with, shall we say, adult material, of a bracingly depraved and graphic nature. Some of these dreams you'd hesitate to tell your therapist.

The nature of the novel is played with, the story becomes plastic, veers in and out of realism. Two characters discuss detective fiction, then a murder in the hotel hosting the literary conference sends the novel off into a mystery potboiler for a few hundred pages. The author's hand appears then vanishes. Gamboa is constantly playing subtle jokes that heighten the dreamlike qualities of the narrative while making sure we see the artificiality and constructed nature of the novel. As one example, over the course of the book a good half-dozen characters separately, by coincidence, eat the same banal meal: a chicken sandwich and a Diet Coke. Gamboa stretches our credibility to the snapping point with these games, then gives us remarkably moving scenes of disciples and lovers and addicts and other vividly real people struggling mightily with their lives.

This a a rich, complex, novel full of mysteries and revelations. The dark underside of the human experience is thoroughly probed, but even the most outre sequences don't feel gratuitous. They feel of a piece with the rest of this strange book, monologues and stories from a time of darkness, cross-sections of lives in a broken world.

[Kate Bradley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Necropolis is sumptuously written and beautifully translated into English. Against the backdrop of a surreal conference in war-torn Jerusalem, Gamboa weaves together stories of individuals fighting to remain individuals in the face of adversity, battling with drug abuse, extreme poverty, war, governmental corruption, sexual violence and bad luck. As the characters discuss their own struggles, the protagonist, a writer at the conference, struggles with the book's central mystery,and the reader struggles to ascertain whether or not characters are telling the truth, both within their personal narratives and in their interactions with other characters. There is no real dénouement, no revelation of truth - as Jessica points out near the end of the book, sometimes people's truth dies with them, and then you're free to keep on seeking it, but it may not be findable. Necropolis transports you across the world, from the US and Colombia and Brazil to Jerusalem, then to Africa and Rome; I read it with a world map in my mind, and the way he managed to invoke so many different scenes without too many purple passages really was extraordinary. Despite all of the potential 'depth', Gamboa and his translator remain resiliently humorous, playing the high-brow and the low-brow off against one another expertly (left-wing porn, anyone?) and capturing the entertaining side of human egotism.
Though I really enjoyed this book, it had some content which I wish I was warned about beforehand; even the scenes of extreme violence, sex and drugs are gorgeously written, but if you're usually squeamish when faced with graphic imagery, or taken aback by 'crude' language, this book is probably one to avoid. There isn't a chapter in this novel which a conservative parent wouldn't censor - Gamboa either aims to shock the unshockable, or draw mankind's portrait from its least favourite angle.
So why 4, not 5 stars? I was a little disturbed by the representation of women in Necropolis, despite my high praise for other elements of character depiction. Almost all of the women in this book seem to be described in relation to men: they're having sex with men, performing for men, dressing for men, related to men, dying from the loss of a man... these things are not unrealistic, but the lack of any female characters who are more than sex-obsessed and petty-minded is really quite striking, and I just don't relate to that as a woman.

[Rommel Manosalvas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lo que puedo decir sobre esta novela es lo siguiente:
- Ebenezer, sandwiches de pollo y coca-cola dietética. Creo que el autor se queda corto en cuanto a elección de nombres y menús gastronómicos. Repetitivo hasta el cansancio.
- El personaje de Supervielle es jodidamente insufrible. No lo tolero.
- Hay personajes que simplemente sirven de relleno: Momo, Simónides, Jefferson, etc. Aunque digamos que esto es lo menos importante dado que por otro lado hay muchos personajes bastante bien logrados.
- La historia de Supervielle sobre la Variante Oslovski & Flo es una de las más planitas (no digo aburridas), pero palidece en contraste con historias como Jardín de flores raras, El sobreviviente y la larguísima El ministerio de la Misericordia, que por cierto no está mal, pero llega a ser un tanto inverosímil a ratos. Para mi criterio Jardín de flores raras es el mejor relato de todo el libro.

En fin es un libro interesante, en general me gustó, pero no es de mis favoritos.

[Gary Homewood · Rating 4 out of 5]

Diverse group of characters at a literary conference of "Biography and Memory" in a hotel in a war zone, recounting fairly gripping life stories of an enigmatic leader of a religious cult, a leftist porn star and second-rate chess players. Some subtle interlinking of narrative, personal politics and storytelling.

[Gilly Orr · Rating 5 out of 5]

a brilliantly heartwarming tale, despite the graphic language and stories

[Nicolle Rios · Rating 2 out of 5]

i give up on this fucking book

[Alan · Rating 3 out of 5]

{...I}t is easier to do without things that do not yet exist{...}
—Necropolis, p.19

Paperlessness is perhaps unstoppably upon us, but despite recommendation engines and databases aplenty, one thing that still cannot easily be matched by the online world is the simple serendipity of trawling through shelves in a library or bookstore, pulling out things that catch one's eye and leafing through them... performing a digital search using one's actual digits. That is how I found Colombian author Santiago Gamboa's Necropolis, at any rate: looking for that next good read in old-fashioned analogue mode, while scanning the Gs at my local branch library.

Necropolis is from Europa Editions, a 21st-Century publishing house based in New York City but founded by a couple of Italians, specializing in high-quality translations of world fiction into English. The book's clean graphic design, credited to one Emanuele Ragnisco, attracted me immediately. Europa Editions' house style is elegantly simple, and the cover photograph reminded me of a shot from the film Inception. (That is, in case you're wondering, a good thing.) When I picked it up, I found a solid trade paperback, printed on fine paper with a bit of heft to it—a pleasing physical package.

I quickly realized that Necropolis' ominous, intriguing title is meant metaphorically. Though Santiago Gamboa's story is undeniably, in the words of Italian porn star Sabina Vedovelli, "a harsh and sometimes even macabre one, so I hope there are no young people in the room" (p.289), there are no zombies here. Despite its setting in a city where so many dead already lie, Necropolis is by and (to appropriate a phrase) for us, the living.

It begins with Gamboa's narrator, who is identified (and that belatedly) only as "E.H.," receiving an invitation to ICBM, the International Conference on Biography and Memory, to be held quite soon in Jerusalem. "ICBM" is an evocative initialism in this context, not least because Jerusalem at the time of the conference is under unusually heavy bombardment from unidentified forces—but is it the same in the original Spanish? No, not at all—the name would be (at least according to Google Translate) "Conferencia Internacional sobre la Biografía y la Memoria," or CIBM. So those English initials would appear to be at most a translator's joke. (This translation is credited to Howard Curtis, by the way.)

Or perhaps it's Gamboa's own play on the initials. The narrator of Necropolis (and hence its author) is after all widely read in Spanish, English, and other languages too.

Though he is still convalescing from a recent serious illness. E.H. is eager to attend ICBM, especially once he sees the list of other guests, whose own memories and biographies make up much of Necropolis. He is a Dante, his largely self-imposed mission to observe and report back from his descent, if not into Hell, certainly into Chaos.

He is also an aficionado of, among many others, sf authors like Philip K. Dick and Yevgeny Zamiatin. But the sf author who came to my mind most readily when reading this novel (though this name is never mentioned in the text) is J.G. Ballard. The surreal juxtaposition of an international literary conference with the apocalyptic landscape of an ancient city under siege, the central character who is so often a passenger looking out of windows at scenes of destruction, as well as the unbridled sexuality and brutal violence of the other characters' memoirs, all struck me as intensely Ballardian.

{...}my memories are the dirty walls of an orphanage, the concrete floor of a kitchen, the garbage piled up in the corners, a leaning lamppost filled with pigeons{...}
—José Maturana, p.420

Necropolis is—perhaps not surprisingly—often extremely raw, and not just in the parts featuring the Italian porn star. Gamboa gives his characters free rein to express their often rather disreputable opinions on sexuality, race and gender. And is (talking about) pornography as art (as art) itself an art? No matter how many layers of metatextual analysis you wrap around it, all too much of this book seemed to me to be just attempts to titillate and create outrage. For a case in point: José Maturana of the so-called "Ministry of Mercy," drops far too many f-bombs; his view of "faggots" is disturbingly retrograde and disappointingly stereotypical.

(Parts of Maturana's story, by the way, are set in the former Federal penitentiary in Moundsville, West Virginia, and in Charleston, West Virginia's state capitol. The latter is referred to only as "Charleston," as if the larger one in South Carolina did not exist. This seemed odd to me, since Charleston, South Carolina, as well as being larger, would be closer to a resident of Miami like Maturana, but perhaps that was not apparent to Gamboa, who has resided in Colombia, New Delhi and Rome, but never in the U.S.)

But I digress. To get back to the point: the central dialectic—the crux—of Necropolis, or so it seems to me, comes fairly late in the book, but is forcefully stated once it appears. Compare and contrast this:

The things that stifle me today are the result of wars and destruction and learned books and terrible peace treaties; many people have died so that we, the grandchildren of the century, can have what is crushing us today, as if we were on the verge of falling into a deep sleep, an opium sleep.
—Marta, the Icelandic journalist, p.446

with this:

{...Y}ou have to be aware of the fact that this boring, predictable, overprotected life you curse is the dream of millions of poor Africans, Asians, and Latin Americans; the dream of all those who see their children die of typhoid or malaria in the slums of Khartoum or Dar Es Salaam, the young people who fall asleep in their rickshaws in broad daylight because of malnutrition in New Delhi; the dream of those who grow up without schools or health and have to make do later on with picking up a rifle or a package of drugs in Burma or Liberia or Colombia; the dream of those who, because of poverty, lose their humanity and are capable of cutting throats, decapitating, lopping off arms and legs, castrating. You want their smiles and their dances and their freshness and their contagious optimism and they want your schools and libraries, your hospitals, your thirty-five-hour weeks and your paid vacations, your labor laws and your human rights, and of course they also want the abundance and the glitter. You want their soul and they want your money. The difference is that they can't choose and you can. You can have both worlds just by wanting them. They can't. Their world is a prison from which they can only escape by knocking down a wall or jumping into the sea or digging tunnels as if they were rodents; you just have to buy an airline ticket, you don't even need a visa. To get what you despise, they risk their lives, you know what the fundamental difference is? that the rich can choose to be poor if they want, or pretend to be poor, but never the opposite.
—E.H., pp.447-448

These things have been pointed out before, of course. But just as with Dante's descent into the Inferno, the ultimate reason for E.H.'s sojourn in Jerusalem is not just to make these observations, crucial as they are, but to complete the journey to where those observations can be made.

Though I did see a few unpleasant sights along the way, Necropolis is rich in biography and memory: a journey worth making.

[Tyrone Aragón · Rating 5 out of 5]

Había escuchado algunos comentarios sobre Necrópolis hace un par de años. Los cuales no eran tan generosos ahora que ya la he leído. He tratado de entender a qué se debe la razón del infortunio causado en algunos de sus lectores, y creo saber que se trata acerca de los personajes contenidos en la trama. Quienes son mayoritariamente sujetos marginales, subalternos, de estratos sociales y de oficios que pueden ser muy vulgares para la mayoría. Precisamente este tipo de narrativa es la que a mí más me cautiva. Porque la literatura no puede escribirse con vendas en los ojos. Dicho esto, entraré en materia.

En la página 325 de la edición de Debolsillo, la actriz porno dice al cerrar su predica que "Las vidas son como la ciudades: si son limpias y ordenadas, no tienen historia. Es en la desgracia y en la destrucción donde surgen las mejores." Este comentario me parece la médula del libro. Primero porque la trama se desarrolla en una ciudad de Jerusalén, donde de continuo los diálogos son interrumpidos por la violencia de las bombas detonadas cerca, y los gritos de las víctimas que preñan el aire de mortuoria vigilia; segundo porque la vida misma de cada personaje es sucia, desordenada y en todas ellas la destrucción acaba por imperar. ¿A caso no es un retrato de precisa cosmovisión? Brillante por Santiago al escribir con tanda violencia sobre la violencia misma.

Otro punto que me gustaría resaltar es la estructura de la novela: diría que algo simultaneísta y polifónica, carece casi en su totalidad de la estructura clásica del diálogo (el uso del guión largo) pero en sí la novela es un diálogo total. Es muy interesante. Las primeras historias en las que leí algo similar fueron de Pedro Lemebel y Andrés Caicedo. Dos autores que también centraron su literatura en la sociedad marginada. De esta forma obtenemos pasajes enteros narrados por un protagonista que a su vez narra otra historia, la que a su vez tiene otros protagonistas. Lo importante es que todo sucede con impecable legibilidad. El que se pierda que lea un poco más.

También quiero destacar que el lenguaje de esta novela está a la altura de sus personajes. Para mí, más que el uso de ciertas palabras una historia se construye a través del oído. Thomas Pynchon aborrecía algunos de sus primeros relatos porque en ellos no había un aguzado sentido auditivo. Sus personajes se perdían por ello. Y el relato mismo era insostenible. En esta empresa de Santiago Gamboa, cada personaje habla como debe hablar. Cuestión que me suscita mucha alegría. Pues la literatura no siempre se permite estas elegancias. No pensé que en una obra premiada podría haber leído el término "Culear" que es vulgo u obsceno si se quiere, pero y qué, su personaje habla de esa forma. Quien no quiera oírlo que cierre el libro y vaya por líricas más moralistas. Vacías y descarnadas, desde luego. Y quien no, siga deleitando su paladar con una obra sofisticada en su lenguaje.

Ya por último quiero mencionar otro pasaje que pueden ilustrar muy bien lo que yo me atrevo a pensar son implícitas justificaciones del autor ante una obra así.

"¿Se puede llegar al fondo de una vida a través de la palabra"? Se pregunta uno de los personajes. Parece que esto ronda toda la trama. Tenerlo en cuenta.

Y ahora sí ya para acabar, no considero que sea una obra del Realismo Sucio, si al final están pensando que lo dicho por mí se acopla a lo que ha escrito Carver, Bukowski, o algún otro. Creo más bien que es una obra Naturalista. Pero muy a su tiempo. No postmodernista, aclaro. Si alguien tiene intenciones de leer algo contemporáneo con buena calidad, aquí un libro a la altura.

[João Ricardo · Rating 4 out of 5]

É-me bastante difícil fazer uma review deste livro, porém devo dizer que é uma narrativa intrigante e sem um fio que ligue tudo ou uma aparente mensagem.
Através de uma coleção de histórias (algumas delas brilhantes, sobretudo a de Walter de Salle que poderia perfeitamente ser um conto fantástico) constrói-se longos caminhos de reflexão sobre as mais diversas temáticas - o vício, a guerra, o ódio, o amor, a religião, a solidão, o conhecimento e a vingança, etc - que penso serem mais ou menos impactantes consoante o momento da vida em que o lemos e, sobretudo, consoante as experiências e traumas transatos de cada leitor.
O facto de todo o congresso biográfico ocorrer na cidade de Jerusalém, "a cidade onde o Ocidente e o Oriente vêm morrer", pode ser interpretada, não só como uma crítica aos meios intelectuais ao redor do meio litérario, mas também como uma metáfora para a postura do leitor: estamos sitiados, tal como a cidade, pelas histórias que nos revela e temos de saber navegar entre as mesmas e, de algum modo, saber-lhes retirar algum sentido ou significado; ou talvez não, não há necessidade disso.
Pessoalmente, vejo que a própria obra é, em si mesma, uma biografia da vida do autor/narrador. Pode-se também supor que toda a narrativa poderia ser uma fabulação mental do escritor que teve dois anos sem escrever e, de alguma forma, desenvolveu toda esta obra, atribuindo a cada narrativa no congresso aspetos da sua personalidade ou da sua psique.

A história de Ivo Machado, poeta açoriano, e que creio ser verídica, foi uma das que mais me surpreendeu, porque o autor Santiago Gamboa efetivamente parece ter uma relação pessoal com o poeta nacional e, em simultâneo, pois a história de Machado é quase uma premonição trágica do seu próprio destino e da sua aptidão para levar uma vivência tremendamente poética. Cito a conclusão desta pequena e belíssima história, que creio ser exímia e profundamente tocante:
"Todos nós que escrevemos o deveríamos fazer desse modo: como se as nossas palavras fossem para um piloto que luta sozinho, no meio da noite, contra uma violenta tempestade."
(Li esta passagem num momento muito curioso, resultando numa inacreditável coincidência).

Nota: Este livro faz imensas referências culturais a outros artistas e obras das mais diversas áreas - cinema, porno e literatura, primordialmente -, algumas das quais deveria de explorar, em especial, as obras de Bolaño, o cinema coreano mencionado, os autores italianos referenciados e as Histórias do Decameron de Boccaccio.

[Paul McBride · Rating 4 out of 5]

I must admit, this book was a challenge. I must have read the book flap at least a dozen times to remind myself what this book was about.
The writing is superb, the story or I really should say stories in this book are all over the map. Yes the book, as the book flap says is about an author attending a conference and one of the speakers at the conference-after speaking commits suicide. But the story is about so much more. Is is about human behavior in all its honorable as well as depraved forms.
This is the second book by this author that I have read, and I really like his work. I only wish I read and spoke Spanish to really enjoy is writing instead of reading a translation.