Reputations

Vásquez’s novels wrestle big subjects in small places. Reputations unfolds largely in a house nestled deep in the mountains of Vásquez’s native Bogotá, where a controversial cartoonist is visited by a woman who forces him to re-evaluate his career and distant past. But its plot spirals out, way out, to probe themes of memory, freedom of expression, the weight of the past and—as the title suggests—the fragility of public and private reputations. —Zach Schonfeld