It was the physicality of Tomas Gonzalez’s novel that first made me pick up In the Beginning Was the Sea in a London bookstore. It’s a Pushkin Collection edition, smaller than the conventional book size and with an elegant, tactile cover with French flaps. The biography at the back of the book provided a level of intrigue: “He (Gonzalez) studied Philosophy before becoming a barman in a Bogota nightclub, whose owner published In the Beginning Was the Sea, his first novel …” Bar owner as publisher?
Jaded intellectuals, J and Elena, abandon their middle-class existence in Medellin for