Sadly the format of this book as constant text felt exhausting and somewhat overwhelming. I also could not connect with the characters sufficientit to care about their outcome therefore I did not finish this title.

I could not get into this book. I felt that i did not connect with the travelling couple on the road and felt that he was unlikable and she was selfish. I wished that i did like it more but i couldn't finish it.

The aim of this book is clearly thematic and set in times and places that are distinctly difficult to draw us into relating to the general political orientation - it feels distanced and that has. Lot to do with the author's attitude to his theme. I could not entirely grasp what made the characters tick - mainly I suppose because I found them distanced. I can see this is a worthy novel and valuable to have revived.

First published in 1924, The Vortex is generally considered one of the most important novels of 20th century Latin American literature. It follows the journey of a young poet Arturo Cova through three regions of Columbia, the city of Bogota, the endless plains and the jungle, and it is in the jungle that Cova comes face to face with the appalling conditions in which the rubber tappers work and where they are exploited by the rubber barons. Along his journey, as he flees with his lover Alicia, he meets all types of people and undergoes all kinds of hardships and difficulties and the book has a very “Heart of Darkness” feel to it. Descriptions of the country are vivid and atmospheric but I just couldn’t relate to any of the characters and didn’t really care what happened to any of them. The social aspects of the book I was interested in, however, and I can see that the book is a powerful denunciation of capitalist exploitation. Man pitted against nature, the richness and fecundity all around destroyed by human greed, the ruthless treatment of the workers, all these aspects held my attention up to a point. But overall I didn’t enjoy the novel as a narrative, and I soon found myself skipping bits. Worth discovering, yes, but not one for me.