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