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Volver la vista atrás (2021)

by Juan Gabriel Vásquez

Other authors: See the other authors section.

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1036266,535 (4.1)8
"The Colombian film director, Sergio Cabrera, is in Barcelona for a retrospective of his work. It's a hard time for him: his father, famous actor Fausto Cabrera, has just died; his marriage is in crisis; and his home country has rejected peace agreements that might have ended more than fifty years of war. In the course of a few intense days, as his films are on exhibit, Sergio recalls the events that marked his family's unusual and dramatic lives: especially his father's, his sister Marianella's and his own. Growing up in Colombia as the children of famous actors, Sergio and Marianella were privileged and artistic, until their parents became disillusioned with bourgeois conventions and moved the entire family to China. Mao's Cultural Revolution was underway and the family lived in an entirely ex-pat hotel where they learned Chinese and joined the revolution, became members of the Red Guard, and trained as guerilla fighters. When they returned to Colombia to support the revolution there, they were sent into the countryside to join the guerilla force, were shot at and nearly died. Out of these lives molded by ideology and zealotry, came an artistic second life for Sergio as he escaped the movement and became his country's most celebrated film director. From the Spanish Civil War to the exile of his family to Latin America, and from the Cultural Revolution in China to the guerrilla movements of 1960s Colombia, Sergio and his family's experience is extraordinary by any standards. Equal parts family saga and epic historical novel, Retrospective reveals the story of one man and his family -- based on real people and events -- and a devastating portrait of the forces that shaped their lives, and for half a century turned the world upside down"--… (more)
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» See also 8 mentions

Spanish (3)  French (1)  English (1)  Catalan (1)  All languages (6)
A biographical novel about the Colombian film director Sergio Cabrera (b. 1950; since appointed as Colombia's ambassador in Beijing) and his father, the actor Fausto Cabrera (1924-2016). The book is in novel form, but closely based on interviews with Sergio and people around him, and takes as its central axis a retrospective of Sergio's films in Barcelona shortly after Fausto's death.

It's a fascinating story, especially the parts dealing with the schooldays of Sergio and his sister in Beijing during the Cultural Revolution — where their parents had parked them whilst they went back to take part in a revolution back home — and their subsequent time as young guerrillas fighting in the Colombian rain-forest. Vásquez looks at the inevitable clash between Maoist idealism and the realities of fighting in an irregular force in difficult conditions, and at the way these extreme experiences leave a mark on later life. A lot of the historical and political ideas that come up in Vásquez's earlier books come into play here too, but this is much more a personal than a political story. Very interesting. ( )
  thorold | Oct 22, 2022 |
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Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Juan Gabriel Vásquezprimary authorall editionscalculated
Lange, SusanneTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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Information from the German Common Knowledge. Edit to localize it to your language.
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Epigraph
For, according to our view of the thing, a novel should be the biography of a man or of an affair, and a biography whether of a man or of an affair should be a novel.

Ford Madox Ford
Joseph Conrad: A Personal Remembrance
Dedication
For Sergio Cabrera and Silvia Jardim Soares
For Marianella Cabrera
First words
According to what he told me himself, Sergio Cabrera had been in Lisbon for three days when he got the phone call telling him of his father's accident.
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"The Colombian film director, Sergio Cabrera, is in Barcelona for a retrospective of his work. It's a hard time for him: his father, famous actor Fausto Cabrera, has just died; his marriage is in crisis; and his home country has rejected peace agreements that might have ended more than fifty years of war. In the course of a few intense days, as his films are on exhibit, Sergio recalls the events that marked his family's unusual and dramatic lives: especially his father's, his sister Marianella's and his own. Growing up in Colombia as the children of famous actors, Sergio and Marianella were privileged and artistic, until their parents became disillusioned with bourgeois conventions and moved the entire family to China. Mao's Cultural Revolution was underway and the family lived in an entirely ex-pat hotel where they learned Chinese and joined the revolution, became members of the Red Guard, and trained as guerilla fighters. When they returned to Colombia to support the revolution there, they were sent into the countryside to join the guerilla force, were shot at and nearly died. Out of these lives molded by ideology and zealotry, came an artistic second life for Sergio as he escaped the movement and became his country's most celebrated film director. From the Spanish Civil War to the exile of his family to Latin America, and from the Cultural Revolution in China to the guerrilla movements of 1960s Colombia, Sergio and his family's experience is extraordinary by any standards. Equal parts family saga and epic historical novel, Retrospective reveals the story of one man and his family -- based on real people and events -- and a devastating portrait of the forces that shaped their lives, and for half a century turned the world upside down"--

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