Schavelzon Graham Agencia literaria Barcelona

The Night Will Be Long

NOVEL, ALFAGUARA, 2019. 406 PAGES

A boy witnesses a brutal attack on a remote country road in the Department of Cauca. No one in the nearest town claims to have heard anything but an anonymous report finds its way to public prosecutor Jutsiñamuy in Bogotá.

In the company of a pair of engaging heroines, the journalist Julieta Lezama and her assistant Johana, a former FARC guerrilla, the prosecutor will set out on a dangerous investigation in which he encounters a plethora of potential suspects of all kinds. When the guilty parties are found, however, they turn out to be entirely unexpected, albeit as dangerous as all the others.

It'll Be a Long Night is a fast-paced story sprinkled with moments of humour and pain; a novel that exposes the inequality and violence that still plague Colombia.

Review Zenda Libros

Article BBC (Spanish)

«A subtle, energetic thriller, a captivating story set in a Colombia trying to heal its wounds as best it can, featuring several remarkable protagonists.»

La Cause Littéraire

«A gripping, stunning crime novel.»
Le Figaro Magazine

«A richly textured thriller about competing religious organizations in post-civil war Colombia.»

The Washington Post

«A story that gives no respite. [...] Very cinematic.»

El Tiempo

«Gamboa speaks with a gentle vehemence, with a mixture of European logic and Latin American sweetness. His look at his country is one of affection and awe.»

Antonio Iturbe, Heraldo de Aragón - Artes & Letras

«Written with a punctual and bearable rhythm and with a neutral and simple style, it is a novel that reads in one sitting.»

Diego Gándara, La Razón

«A novel in its purest form that testifies to the author's extraordinary fabulous capacity, his powerful narrative voice, with a fluid flow, interspersed with humorous touches and unstoppably dynamic action. [...] An avid and absorbing read: [...] Gamboa has portrayed like few others Colombian life with its face and many tragic crosses, even with an affirmed love for the land and the people who suffer.»

Luis Alonso Girgado, El Ideal Gallego

«Away from magical realism, Gamboa shares with other Latin American authors a new realistic perception of narrative that drinks from the sources of the noir novel but without enclosing itself in it.»

José Manuel Fajardo, El Mundo

«For my money, there may be no more ambitious, accomplished writer than Gamboa at work in international noir today. Gamboa brings a searching, penetrating style to the prose and unwinds a genuinely compelling and provocative story that interrogates the very nature of violence and truth.»

Crime Reads

"A story that urgently reveals inequality and violence that govern an entire country, The Night Will Be Long is a devastatingly humorous thriller that will appeal to fans of Roberto Bolaño and Fernanda Melchor's Hurricane Season. [...] Santiago Gamboa's fascinating characters introduce an addictive and nuanced narrative about conflict-rife Colombia."

Fantastic Fiction