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

Writer Juan Gabriel Vásquez, academic Erna von der Walde and translator Daniel Hahn discuss José Eustasio Rivera's classic Latin American novel The Vortex.

The book follows the 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.

Vásquez and von der Walde, who have both written a new forward for the book, talk to Hahn – one of the translators of The Vortex into English – about this inventive, funny, and wildly prescient novel about the human and environmental costs of extractive systems.