… Vásquez knows that history isn’t the “facts”, much less an approachable truth: it’s the shape of the ruins. Everything we describe as the past depends on an interpretation of what’s left over: and everything that’s left over has a baked-in undependability. In addition, no historical narrative has clear-cut limits: a beginning is always the story of what came before it, an ending is an extended dissolve – a solution which can only weaken with time. Definition, as much as conclusion, is shaped by needs and narrators.

From M John Harrison’s review of The Shape of the Ruins by Juan Gábriel Vasquez at Teh Graun.