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The Colombian novelist and journalist Juan Gabriel V\\xe1squez is widely regarded as one of the most important Latin American writers today \\u2013 known for his novels published in 28 languages, including the award-winning The Sound Of Things Falling, The Shape of the Ruins, and five other works of fiction, plus stories, literary essays, and political commentary.

Born outside the capital city of Bogot\\xe1 and having lived there as a student, V\\xe1squez says it\'s a place that helped shaped his creative life and consciousness as a writer. After 16 years in Paris and Spain, he returned to Colombia to live and write. Now, as he embarks on his latest novel due to be published in December, Natalia Guerrero talks to Vasquez in Bogot\\xe1 to find out how he works on his books.

As he writes he describes his creative process from thought to page and start to finish. We hear how Bogot\\xe1 has influenced his writing as "a life calling" with "literature in the centre of my life"; and how he keeps to a daily writing routine \\u2013 including wearing noise-cancelling headphones so that he can have the silence he needs to create his work.

And there are the very intimate moments of writing the final words and sharing his new book with its very first reader - his wife.