Santiago Gamboa’s “Return to the Dark Valley” is a very accessible work of postmodern noir shot through with philosophy and poetry.
Among the characters populating this polyphonic novel are Tertullian, an Argentinian neo-fascist who claims paternity from the Pope and believes in “necessary destructions”; Palacios, a priest who founds an anti-Communist death squad; and Manuela Beltrán, a poet emerging from a dark past and wondering if there’s “a certain spirituality in excess”.
Their plots run parallel for most of the book, converging thematically around rape, revenge, and deception, and eventually cohering around a Colombian intellectual called the Consul – an alterego for Gamboa, who was once Colombia’s cultural attaché in New Delhi. The Consul’s biography of poet Arthur Rimbaud, from enfant terrible in Charleville and Paris to voluntary exile in Harar, Ethiopia, forms the spine of the novel and, with its interest in migration and the impossibility of true return, reflects the concerns found in the dramatic monologues.
The story jumps from Rome and Madrid (where Boko Haram beseiges the Irish embassy) via Berlin to Bogota and Cali. Its kaleidoscopic nature aims to suggest our contemporary sense of accelerating dislocation.
The shifts in voice and genre are masterfully played. Gamboa’s Consul says that in an increasingly readerless world only the most versatile writers will survive, and Gamboa has versatility in spades, as well as the intoxicatingly prolific fluency of a Roberto Bolaño, with whom he is frequently compared. His writing is exuberant, sometimes extravagant, and makes reliably compulsive reading.
