This book is a thriller set in Columbia. There is violence within it. It is written so well. It was nice to read a book from another country.

With its endless red herrings, looping backstories and unexpected tangents, Gamboa’s novel is a complex beast – and yet, somehow, it doesn’t feel that way to read. Structurally, it is digestible, with new, often self-contained plot arcs presented in the form of police reports, interviews or stories, and there is plenty of fairly pacey dialogue that both maintains momentum and helps the reader keep a handle on the story. Though often writing about dark subjects, not least the everyday violence to which the book returns again and again, Gamboa’s tone is light and playful, with a generous sprinkling of humour to keep things palatable. Above all, though, it is his strong characterisation that makes this novel so enjoyable: Julieta, Johana, Justiñamuy and their many fellow characters, both major and minor, veritably leap off the page, each with a distinct voice and set of personal problems that make them relatable and human. This is, of course, in no small part the work of translator Andrea Rosenberg, who has deftly created a parade of voices beneath the overarching, witty-yet-intelligent tone of the narrator.

The Night Will Be Long is a novel about Colombia, about corruption and murder and self-interest and lies, but also about the world in general and the difficulty with being human. It is about everyday struggles and the way the past repeats on us, about the many layers to any story and what makes good people do bad things. At its heart, it is about the impossibility of ever being right – after all, as even the impassioned Julieta seems forced to accept in the end, ‘“Truth is merely our perception of the truth”’. As Gamboa so deftly shows in this novel, it is not so much the ‘what’ that matters as the ‘how’ and the ‘why’ – two factors that can be almost infinitely various. Smart, thoughtful, liberally doused in both metaphor and wit, The Night Will Be Long is a celebration of voice and multiplicity, and of the vital art of storytelling.

[excerpt from the full review available on my blog]

Overall a gripping and enjoyable read. Fast-paced, action-packed. Violent themes, but not descriptively violent. I found the dialogues a bit too much to handle. Just too much of it, and about half of it cluttered with clichéd expressions. I want this to either be a film or at least a play of some sort. At its core, a rather well-composed story; but the semi-romantic, explicitly-sexual subplots are rather unnecessary as they do not contribute much to the main plot at all. Unnecessary but not badly written. Perhaps they were only there to 'lighten' the heavier themes and scenes in the novel. For an almost 400-pages-long book, this was not a hard one to get through at all. I am quite ignorant (still; and shamefully) when it comes to Latin American history, but I'm assuming someone who has a better sense of it will have an even more rewarding reading experience of Gamboa's novel. If you enjoyed the film, 'Sicario' (2015), you'll probably enjoy Gamboa's novel as well.

Europa Editions truly be coming out with all sorts of interesting books; and this one's quite a star of its own. I'm rating it a little less than it deserves because of how dialogue-heavy the writing was. It just wasn't something that I like, but I can imagine someone else appreciating it more than I do.

Different from my usual reads but I loved this.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for letting me access an advance copy of this book in exchange for my feedback.

Gamboa's writing style definitely reminded me of Bolano's prose; overall, "The Night Will Be Long" is a well-structured literary thriller, rich with cultural, political and social Colombian flavour.

A well-structured crime novel with two particularly strong points: the pace and the setting in Colombia. I raced through it, which is also a compliment to the translator.

It starts very spectacularly with an ambush attack on a convoy crossing a river in the middle of nowhere. A shoot-out ensues and a helicopter arrives on the scene transporting to safety an unknown VIP.

What happened? If the army isn't involved then who were shooting at each other? Who is the unknown VIP? And why does the police try to cover everything up? A journalist and prosecutor try to unravel the mystery.

Although I like TV police series and thriller movies, I tend to avoid crime novels as I often got disappointed (especially by the quality of the writing) and prefer to spend valuable reading time on literary fiction. But this one was really propulsive, revealing an additional piece of the puzzle on almost every page. The characters are slightly caricatural, but that didn't matter so much.

The plot is central, so that what we learn about the Colombian society and especially its conflict and peace process is always at the service of the narrative.

Well recommended if you want an original and not-too-complex page-turner in an exotic setting.

And many thanks to Netgalley and Europa for the eARC.

Santiago Gamboa’s literary thriller concerns the aftermath of a violent ambush in contemporary, south-western Columbia, the subsequent mysterious cover-up and a follow-up investigation by journalist Julieta and Jutsinamuy, a Bogota-based prosecutor. Their tentative leads track to Columbia’s booming, evangelical mega-churches, linked through an organisation known as The Alliance, all apparently united in their determination to prevent what they call, “the ideology of gender and the creation of a homosexual state.” But pursuing the truth’s a risky undertaking when it involves powerful, religious institutions exempt from taxation, or the need to account for themselves or their incomes. Gamboa’s narrative shifts between Julieta’s and Jutsinamuy’s points of view and his story’s at its most convincing when he’s exploring Columbia’s troubled social and political terrain. It’s much less effective in the portrayal of characters and their inner worlds: dialogue’s frequently clumsy and exposition-heavy, Julieta’s conflicted sexual desires are so awkwardly represented they border on parody.

Gamboa’s been compared to Roberto Bolano but I didn’t find this piece as stylistically accomplished or intellectually complex as Bolano’s work. Gamboa does play around a little with structure, register and prose style: breaking up stretches of third-person narration with first-person accounts; minor characters frequently depicted via transcriptions of lengthy monologues revealing their back stories together with snippets from Columbia’s difficult history. But this didn’t really work for me as a strategy or seem to particularly enrich the writing. These passages often felt stagey, overly artificial, and the voices didn’t stand out from each other, they also detracted from the tension created by Gamboa’s more tightly-paced material. The most engaging elements, for me, related to discussions of Columbia’s evangelical movements, which have been heavily criticised for their political conservatism and increasing, negative impact on Columbia’s political climate - I wish Gamboa had spent less time detailing his main characters’ flaws, and far more on this aspect of his novel.

Translated here by Andrea Rosenberg.

I dont even know where to start with this book, the premise was great, the storyline was amazing, it was beautifully written and the characters were so well developed it felt like they jumped off the page. Do yourself a favour and read this book.