El ruido de las cosas al caer begins with the bizarre scene of the escape and later entrapment of a hippopotamus, the last remnant of the zoo that Pablo Escobar used to flaunt his power. Juan Gabriel Vásquez, who obtained the 2011 Alfaguara Novel Prize for the work, is one of the Latin American novelists with the highest international profile. He is also author of The Informers, shortlisted for the UK’s Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and The Secret History of Costaguana. He will talk to Mario Jursich, editor of El Malpensante.