Juan Gabriel Vásquez and Erna von der Walde talk to Daniel Hahn

José Eustasio Rivera’s classic Latin American novel The Vortex is widely recognised as one of the best novels written in Colombia. It follows young poet Arturo Cova and his lover, Alicia, as they elope from Bogotá and embark on an adventure through Colombia’s varied and magical landscapes. When Alicia disappears, Arturo and his unstoppable ego must follow her. In pursuing her, Arturo becomes an inadvertent witness to the appalling conditions suffered by workers forced or tricked into tapping rubber trees.

Colombian writer Juan Gabriel Vásquez (The Sound of Things Falling, Retrospective) and Erna von der Walde, a specialist in Colombian and Latin American literature, culture and politics, have written a new foreword for the book. They talk to Daniel Hahn – one of the translators into English of The Vortex – about this inventive, funny and wildly prescient novel about the human and environmental costs of extractive systems.