A review by jacob_wren
The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll by Álvaro Mutis
5.0
Álvaro Mutis writes:
I don’t know who’s worse, the marines or the smugglers. For years they’ve been fighting each other all along this part of the river, but in the end their methods are the same: they use cruelty without anger, in cold blood, but with a professional refinement and imagination that grow more and more terrifying. Their law is the law of conquest: whoever lives here is guilty, period. And both sides enforce the law on the spot and move onto something else. God help us.
And:
There is no cure for my reckless wandering, forever misguided and destructive, forever alien to my true vocation.
I don’t know who’s worse, the marines or the smugglers. For years they’ve been fighting each other all along this part of the river, but in the end their methods are the same: they use cruelty without anger, in cold blood, but with a professional refinement and imagination that grow more and more terrifying. Their law is the law of conquest: whoever lives here is guilty, period. And both sides enforce the law on the spot and move onto something else. God help us.
And:
There is no cure for my reckless wandering, forever misguided and destructive, forever alien to my true vocation.