Santiago Gamboa

I read Night Prayers by this author back in 2016, a book that like this one is hard to really say what it is about.
This book “Return To The Dark Valley is even more difficult to explain. It is about a cast of characters from Colombia who now live in Spain. It is about poets living in the present and one very famous French one from the late 1800’s. It is about drug dealers, and the never ending cycle of violence in Colombia. It is about people who are witnessing the end, and are powerless to do anything about it.
As with the first book, the writing is truly outstanding.
Definitely read Night Prayers first as to of the characters from that book are prominent in this one as well.
Excellent book!… (more)

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.… (more)

"The Night Will Be Long" was not what I was expecting. The reviews (amply quoted in many places) raved. The reviewer from Publishers Weekly went so far as to compare the author to Roberto Bolano. If you take away nothing else from this review it should be that Santiago Gamboa is not Roberto Bolano. Other than their both being Latin American authors, I see no similarities.

I would describe this novel as run-of-the-mill detective/crime fiction. Some interesting dimensions to the story (e.g. corrupt evangelical leaders) but basically nothing to remember. The writing (in translation I admit) is pedestrian; the plot fairly predictable from the outset. Really can't understand the rave reviews. I think I was expecting literature and got pulp fiction. Of course, there is a outside chance it could be me and not all those reviewers at the core of the problem. Maybe!… (more)

There appears to be cheating in the publishing house. Much like baccarat at Rick’s, I don’t feel pained to point out the obvious. Europa Editions have now published several translated novels providing a middlebrow pass to literary sophistication. Barbery, Bronsky, and Cosse amongst others offer a view, a taste without the burden of effort. I’d say Murakami and Paul Auster are just as guilty but alas. You can then imagine my reluctance approaching this unknown novel.

Gamboa certainly lives up to the EE tradition by citing philosophers and theorists and then quickly leaping to detailed carnality—endless ingesting and copulating only for the sake thereof. Oh, and the narrative drifts from Bogota to Delhi and then to Bangkok Tokyo and Teheran.

So why then my favorable response? There are brilliant passages dwelling on our estrangement, our inability to relate to bullshit and the unexpected solace of a poem by Mayakovsky or Rimbaud. Did I find aspects of Night Prayers cheap and contrived? Of course, but it kept a sufficient pulse to ward off my trenchant doubts.… (more)