Review: The Armies
An Acclaimed Novel by an Award Winning Colombian Author
Feb 14, 2009 Zuzana Minarikova
San Jose, a fictional town situated in the coca cultivating region, finds itself in the middle of a military conflict between the so-called forces of order. Although these forces are not identified, the parallel with the Colombian reality is clear.
The civil conflict has plagued Colombia for more than four decades with the Marxist rebels and right-wing paramilitaries fighting for power. The common means of funding these groups are drug trade and ransom money. Kidnappings, murder and torture are served as daily bread. Now mix in the drug-traffickers, the army and the police and try walking in an ordinary old man’s shoes through his home town when it all kicks off.
Sad Old Man
Ismael, a retired teacher addressed to as Professor leads a quiet life in a little town situated in the remote mountains. His wife Otilia scolds him for secretly watching their neighbour Geraldina sunbathing naked in her garden. Not that Otilia is jealous: ‘’To me, to tell you the truth, you don’t matter anymore. My fish and my cats matter more to me than a pitiful old man’’. Blissful indifference of a decades-long married life.
In Ismael, however, there is an undefined longing that drives him to spy on ladies. ‘’I ask nothing more of life than this possibility to see this woman without her knowing that I’m looking at her, to see this woman when she knows I’m looking, but to see her: my only explanation for staying alive’’. Watching women and being receptive to their sexuality makes him painfully aware of his own limitations as an ageing man. The ancient sexual instinct is also probably the only link Ismael is able to make with the living in the dehumanized world of senseless violence.
War in Colombia
The relative tranquillity is soon ended by violent acts of the armies drawing nearer to the town.People of San Jose are taken hostages or killed in growing numbers, many of them Ismael’s friends.
As the battle finally bursts from the outskirts into the town itself, Ismael gets caught in the crossfire and finds out that Otilia has gone missing. Searching for his wife, Ismael wanders the streets of his town, and as if trapped in the landscape of an Hieronymus Bosch’s painting, he witnesses monstrosities of the devaluation of human life.
Allegory of Violence
The Armies is an allegory of destruction of society and its eventual collapse caused by war. This disintegration of the country’s human fabric is presented through the gradual emotional breakdown of the characters.
The story is told in the first person by Ismael whose narrative is fragmented through the use of short sentences and economy of language reflecting the corroding sanity of the town and Ismael’s growing confusion and loss of memory. Unfortunately, the reader does not get to know any other characters. Otilia, for instance, is an ever present character throughout the novel (despite her brief physical appearance) but we have no idea what she feels or whether she shares any of Ismael’s thoughts.
The Armies is a short but powerful novel that preserves the Colombian tradition in terms of its subject-matter but treats it from a new perspective. The novel won the Premio Tusquets Editores de Novela in 2006.
Book Information
Title: The Armies
Author:Evelio Rosero
Publisher: MacLehose Press
ISBN: 978 1 84724 4857 (HB)
978 1 84724 4864 (TPB)
The Armies
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