Juan Gabriel Vásquez is a member of the Colombian Academy of Language. He says the academy's decision to admit novelists is a "profound success" He says fiction has always lived in deep tension with the language that makes it possible.

The invention of the modern novel is an important event in the history of literature, he says. He also says it took place in a privileged way, in the Spanish language, which is the source of the concerns and battles of this academy as much as of mine.