A novel about fathers and sons, about the chain of generations in a defining moment in the history of Colombia, and of the world, in the 20th century. In “Volver La Vista Atrás” (ed. Alfaguara, imported), his most recent novel, Juan Gabriel Vázquez (“The Noise of Things When You Fall” and “As Reputations”) uses fiction to tell the story of a friend, filmmaker Sergio Cabrera and his family, whose trajectory begins in Spain on the verge of falling into the hands of Francoism, through Colombia, splashes to China, and returns to the Andean country, just as it is negotiating a peace agreement that would disarm the country’s main guerrillas.
Cabrera is a well-known Colombian director, famous, among other works, for “La Estrategia do Caracol”, awarded at the Berlin and Biarritz Festivals.
The story begins with the trajectory of Fausto Cabrera, Sergio’s father, who leaves Spain as a boy and, in Colombia, becomes enchanted with the theater. He was the first to use the Stanislavski method to interpret poems, and not just to make dramatic characters. He founded experimental theater schools in Medellín and Bogotá. In addition, he has produced and directed documentaries.
His left-wing ideas make him feel attracted to the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and when he is invited to “collaborate with the transformation” of the Asian country, he does not think twice and travels with the whole family. There, Fausto becomes a Spanish teacher. Meanwhile, Sergio and his sister, Marianela, leave a Bogotá that was experiencing one of its waves of violence to live in a luxury hotel for foreigners in Beijing, and to receive a Maoist and revolutionary education.
The children remain in China, when Fausto decides to return to Colombia, in 1966, and join a left-wing guerrilla, the People’s Liberation Army. In 1969, Sergio and Marianela returned and also embraced the armed struggle.
The book is the result of seven years of conversations between the author and Sergio Cabrera, in which, in addition to recounting the episodes of his adventurous life, he provided Vázquez with elements to reflect on political extremisms, the reverberation of ideologies in the 20th century, and how the history of the creation of the guerrillas and the outbreak of violence in Colombia is part of the same fabric of world events.
The writer explains that nothing is invented, but that the book is a novel because it is his interpretation of a biographical reality.
Vázquez explains why he chose the Cabreras: “It’s a family that approaches leftist ideas, supported by great social movements. At that time, they were far from the only ones who believed in these things. The Cuban Revolution implied a brutal transformation in the psychology of the Latin Americans. And it presented many of them with the possibility of a more just, more equitable society, where people were not exploited and suffered less”.
The book was recently presented at the Buenos Aires Book Fair, won the Mario Vargas Llosa novel award and will be released by Companhia das Letras next year. Anyone who reads Spanish can now buy the digital version of Penguin on Amazon.
The author will soon release a collection on the peace negotiations in Colombia: “Los Desacuerdos de Paz: Artículos y Conversaciones (2012-2022).
