Margarita García Robayo: The Armies (2006 / US: New Directions, 2009, trans. Anne McLean) by Evelio Rosero is the crudest and most moving novel about the endemic violence in our country. You can read it 15 times in a row (because it is short, contained and powerful, which I adore) and it always finds new ways to touch the reader.
JC: The Vortex, by José Eustacio Rivera (1924). In my opinion, the most important novel ever published in Colombia. It begins as a romantic story about two lovers fleeing from Bogota’s rigid social codes and eventually becomes a travel into the heart of darkness as the characters discover the sinister economy of the rubber industry in the Amazon jungle. Mind-blowing, eccentric, linguistically challenging and tremendously pertinent in these times of greed-fueled catastrophe.
MGR: That which has no name (2013) by Piedad Bonnett has an infinite crudeness and tenderness and, above all, it shows the sensitivity and intelligence of the author. It has the simplicity of the most beautiful and honest poetry, without any of the pretensions.
JC: Changó, the Biggest Badass (Texas Tech University Press, 2010, trans. Jonathan Tittler), by Manuel Zapata Olivella. A massive saga on the African diaspora in the Americas. A masterpiece.
MGR: One hundred years of solitude (1967 / US: Harper and Row, 1970) by Gabriel García Márquez built and introduced the most powerful and enduring imaginary of the Latin American universe in the world.
JC: Los días azules (Blue Days), by Fernando Vallejo (1985). A long time before he became Colombia’s grumpy old clown, Vallejo was a masterful writer, a Latin American cousin of Thomas Bernhard. This novel is a good example. An evocative story about childhood, memory, fury and desire.
MGR: En diciembre llegan las brisas (1987) by Marvel Moreno. Moreno is a great prose writer with a very sophisticated sense of humor. She creates the best portraits of Colombian Caribbean society, which translates into the most obstinate sexism in the continent. She was a woman ahead of her time, a free woman in many ways, especially the literary one.
