The shape of the ruins by Juan Gabriel Vásquez: the imaginary struggle for the legacy

Abstract

La forma de las ruinas, by Juan Gabriel Vásquez, allows us to ask how the Colombian historical novel of the last decade provides keys to understanding the collective memory and history of Colombia and, incidentally, contributes to the discussion about the conception of such fictional genre. To clarify the first, it uses a vast range of literary resources through which he reconstructs the concept of “inheritance” (biological, sociopolitical, historical, cultural), and reveals the discursive tensions that have shaped Colombian historical memory. For the second, it redefines the border between literature and history, and poses in a situation of discomfort with each of the fields that make up the oxymoron “historical novel.”