Retrospective

A Novel

By: Juan Gabriel Vasquez, Anne McLean - translator

Narrated by: Sheldon Romero

An epic yet intimate novel about a Colombian man caught up in the sweep of global historical and ideological revolutions.

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.

©2023 Juan Gabriel Vasquez (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

Winner of the Biennial Mario Vargas Llosa Novel Prize

Winner of the Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger

"Imagine two Colombian adolescents as the only guests in a Communist party foreigners’ hotel in China. Juan Gabriel Vásquez is a Colombian writer with the talent to keep a magician’s equilibrium between reality and fiction.... Fascinating... Beautifully written and gripping."—Gioconda Belli, The Guardian

“Juan Gabriel Vásquez is one of the most impressive novelists currently writing in Latin America… [H]e has produced half a dozen major works, to which Retrospective is a masterly addition.”–Times Literary Supplement

“One of the great novels to have been written in our language.”–Mario Vargas Llosa

Historia increíble !!!!

Realmente es difícil imaginarse que una vida así pudo ser real!!!! Esto si es intensidad de creencias, de acciones, de fanatismo que raya en la locura!!! La novela ( biografía) está muy bien lograda ya que, a pesar del cambio de épocas y personajes, para dar visión completa de pasado presente y consecuencias, el hilo conductor nunca se pierde.

Slow start, but a great ending

At first, it seems like, just a listing of who what where, story comes together, and you learn the long, painful history of the war and its effect on families. The family was able to navigate, and ultimately come out ahead, but lots of families were not. It’s fictional but based on. True event.