The Secret History of Costaguana by Juan Gabriel Vasquez: A review
I admit I have never read Joseph Conrad's Nostromo , but after reading this book, it is definitely going on my "to be read" list. Juan Gabriel Vasquez, a Colombian writer, has taken the germ of an idea from Conrad, his mythical country of Costaguana, and recast it as Colombia/Panama. He creates a character, Jose' Altamirano, to narrate his convoluted and non-linear tale of nineteenth and early twentieth century Colombia and Panama, a time when the French attempted to construct a canal from the Atlantic to the Pacific but were defeated by Nature in the form of disease, insects, unbearable heat, and earthquakes. Finally, in the early twentieth century, Panama declared its independence from Colombia (with the encouragement and assistance of the United States) and struck a deal with President Theodore Roosevelt's government to try again to build the canal, and the rest, as they say, is history. Altamirano's story begins in the mid-nineteenth century with his fathe...