En el año 2014, Carlos Carballo es arrestado por intentar robar de un museo el traje de paño de Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, líder político asesinado en Bogotá en 1948. Carballo es un hombre atormentado que busca señales para desentrañar los misterios de un pasado que lo obsesiona. Pero nadie, ni siquiera sus amigos más cercanos, sospecha las razones profundas de su obsesión. ¿Qué conecta los asesinatos de Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, cuya muerte partió en dos la historia de Colombia, y de John F. Kennedy? ¿De qué forma puede un crimen ocurrido en 1914, el del senador liberal colombiano Rafael Uribe Uribe, marcar la vida de un hombre en el siglo XXI? Para Carballo todo está conectado, y las coincidencias no existen. Tras un encuentro fortuito con este hombre misterioso, el escritor Juan Gabriel Vásquez se ve obligado a internarse en los secretos de una vida ajena, al tiempo que se enfrenta a los momentos más oscuros del pasado colombiano.

In 2014, a man is apprehended at a museum in Bogotá trying to steal the suit that an assassinated politician wore on the day of his death. What is behind--and what is the link between--the 1914 attacks against Colombian senator Rafael Uribe Uribe--who would inspire García Márquez to create Aureliano Buendía from One Hundred Years of Solitude, the leader of the Liberal Party Jorge Eliecer Gaitán--whose death in 1948 would blow up the history of Colombia, and JFK in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963? Carlos Carballo, the protagonist of this story, is a man obsessed with the past who looks for signs and clues to unravel history's secrets and lies. What happens if you look at all these crimes together? Is it possible that they might hold an answer? Juan Gabriel Vásquez, the author-narrator of the novel, had a strange privilege: to hold in his hands the mortal remains of those two politicians whose assassinations affected the 20th century in Colombia. This novel stems from that moment in his life. Those are the ruins described in the title. This is a tale about criminal investigations, but also about the relationship that we establish with the past and with political conspiracies, both real and imaginary. Why do they fascinate us? Why do we insist on searching for hidden culprits in the violent acts that have impacted our history? How do we inherit them even if they happened before we were born? By including himself as a narrator in a fiction work, Vásquez uses events in his own life--from the births of his daughters to the way that he came to hold the remains of two murdered men--to reflect about these topics.