Columbian writer Juan Gabriel Vasquez’s novel The Shape of the Ruins strikes the attention of the reader for a variety of reasons, the most obvious being its erasing of the tenuous boundary between history and fiction. Though originally published in Spanish in 2015, it rose to international attention only in 2018 when MacLehose Press released its translation by Anne McLean in English. Its fame was further cemented when it was shortlisted for The Man International Book Prize in 2019. Many consider Vasquez to be the successor of Gabriel Garcia Marquez “as the literary grandmaster of Columbia.” Yet, a cursory reading of this novel would convince the reader that Vasquez’s style is in no way indebted to his predecessor. It not only throws fantasy and magicality of style to the wind, but replaces it with a stark political realism that would at times even tire the reader with the density of its factual details.
The Shape of the Ruins mourns the tragic fate of Columbia that is frequently ripped apart by political violence and murders. Focusing on the given history of two nationally important political murders of the past, Vasquez delineates a present that is haunted by their unresolved mystery. The first murder is that of Liberal politician General Rafael Uribe Uribe who was hacked to death at a public place on 15 October 1914 by two assailants who were soon apprehended and jailed. The second one is of Jorge Eliecer Gaitan, yet another Liberal leader and former minister, who was shot dead in Bogota during his presidential campaign at a busy road in public view by a gunman on 9 April 1948. The gunman was lynched by the mob shortly thereafter. Gaitan’s murder had triggered massive riots in Bogota, a happening that is known as Bogotozo. The novel is an exploration of conspiracy theories relating to these two murders. In 500 odd pages, it weaves alternate histories of these murders with meticulous details corresponding with documented reality, intertwining fact with fiction.
Set in a framework of Chinese box narratives, The Shape of the Ruins builds up its tension in a first person narration by the author Vasquez himself. Altogether bereft of any in-depth characterization, the story however sustains character interest through Carlos Carballo, a forensic specialist. The conspiracy theories that suffuse the novel are his paranoid imaginings. Interwoven with the events in the personal life of Vasquez, the novel basically is about the various ways through which Carballo persuades him to write a book on his (Carballo’s) finding on the ‘real’ reality behind Gaitan’s murder. History says that the conspirators behind Gaitan’s murder, and in this the CIA too has been implicated, could not be brought to light because of the killing of Juan Roa Sierra, the murderer. It is this lost link in history that Vasquez has sought to fictionally recreate. The novel may very well fit into the category of historiographical metafiction.
Carballo comes into contact with Vasquez through a common friend Dr. Francisco Benavides, a surgeon who treats Vasquez’s wife during a complicated pregnancy. Benevides too is involved in the conspiracy theory through his father who was a forensic specialist and Carballo’s professor. Carballo has made up an alternate history of Gaitan’s murder through a long obsessive research. He wants Vasquez to use that material to write a compelling account, which would bring it to international attention. He chooses Vasquez for this because of his recognition as an author, and also because he himself does not have the talent to write. For the academic reader the novel thus also serves fodder by problematizing the contingencies and choices of writing. It is to ensnare a reluctant Vasquez into accepting his proposal that he introduces him to an unpublished manuscript by a certain Marco Tulio Anzola, a lawyer who had conducted a parallel investigation into the 1914 murder of General Uribe Uribe. Anzola’s investigation brings to light several other conspirators who were involved in Uribe’s murder, though he loses his case because of public antipathy. Two third of the novel consists of this text that Vasquez reads.
Despite extensively presenting dry historical accounts corroborated with material proofs in the form of real photographs of historical figures and events, the novel is a compelling read. The best achievement of Vasquez in this book might be the effective blurring of the boundary between fact and fiction. It inspires the reader to disbelieve in given history and makes her aware of the contingencies of representation. Often reminiscent of works by writers like Umberto Eco and Orhan Pamuk in the treatment of the subject, The Shape of the Ruins projects a vision of the undertows of power politics.