Los Estratos

Juan Cárdenas is a literary critic, a translator, and a writer. He is the author of Carreras delictivas and Zumbido.

Far from the preexisting models that deal with the realities of Latin America with a stark, apocalyptic realism or a trivial celebration of the exotic, this novel is radical support for literature devoted to writing, understood to mean the transformation of the everyday experience and as a reflection on the way in which personal, social, and historical stories are constructed. Through one voice constantly interrupted by many others, it tells the story of a man besieged by the need to reconstruct a vague memory from his childhood, while essential elements of his private life collapse with each passing day. The Strata is a machine created to reveal links between the most intimate personal experiences and political violence, which in the end turns the book into a philosophical exploration of the peculiar forms of desire typical of late capitalism in a society as unequal and contradictory as Colombia's in the beginning of the 21st century. The conflicts--civil or bloody, private or public--reach a raw and symbolic dimension, making readers think as much as feel and desire.