Engrossing novel about memory, and the corruption of an entire generation of Colombians who grew up inured to the daily senseless violence of the Escobar years. A very quick read, with my ability to form an opinion no doubt stunted by my lack of cultural reference in this case. The writing (in translation) has moments of beauty and a subtle humor, but ultimately this is a story of loss: the loss of a life, the loss of direction, and the loss of memory (a memory built on a falsehood, with nothing to replace it). I found it difficult to relate to the narrator, if only because he displays flaws which I can too easily identify in myself, and perhaps also because, for a character with such insight into the state of his generation, he has remarkable difficulty placing himself within it. For all his talk about how the Escobar years impacted "our generation," he shows clearly by the end that he learned the lesson far to late to save himself.