The Secret History of Costaguana

“All Colombians are liars,” the narrator of this turbulent novel declares. He is, of course, Colombian, as is the author, who aims at a corrective to the fictionalized portrait of Colombia in Joseph Conrad’s “Nostromo.” Vacillating between polemic and farce, Vásquez presents an alternate history in which Conrad, suffering from writer’s block, purloins his plot from a Colombian who has fled Colón in the wake of revolution. Although the narrator insists that “this is not one of those books where the dead speak,” it is one of those books in which Important Phrases are Capitalized and over which the Angel of History hovers. The story careers from one fevered episode to the next, never stopping long enough to elicit real feeling. It is brave to take on a master, but Vásquez is outgunned. ♦