Literary Strategies of Representing Traumatic Memory in H.G. Vasquez's Novel "The Sound of Falling Things"

The article is devoted to the analysis of the literary strategies of Colombian writer J.G. Vsquez aimed at the representation of traumatic memory in the novel "The Sound of Things Falling" (2011). The research is driven by a focus on the problem of memory, including the study of traumatic memory in literary works from the second half of the 20th to the early 21st centuries. The study of J.G. Vsquez's novel is motivated by the author's intention to examine the mechanisms of memory, which he states in an interview with "Gulf Coast" magazine. The aim of the research is to identify the artistic techniques through which the writer contemplates the themes of individual, collective, and traumatic memory in the context of Colombian history at the end of the 20th century. The tasks of the work include analyzing the narrative and compositional techniques used by the author to convey the traumatic experience of his characters. The analysis of the artistic work utilizes cultural-historical, comparative-typological methods, as well as the biographical method. Key strategies of J.G. Vsquez explored in this work include parody of the "sicario" genre, constructing a fictional story in a real historical context, nonlinear and polyphonic narration, the unreliable narrator technique, intertextual connections, and the leitmotif use of the national locus in the work. Each of the mentioned strategies serves as a tool for understanding traumatic memory in the novel. The application of cultural-historical and structural methods has revealed the peculiarities of J.G. Vsquez's poetics in the context of the era of Colombian narcoterrorism. The study found that the author uses the motif of memory as a key mechanism for reconstructing traumatic experience—both individual and collective. This research can serve as a basis for further study of J.G. Vsquez's work, as well as for comparative analysis with the works of other authors addressing the theme of memory in their writings.