Book Description

"On September 11, 1973, Chile's General Pinochet led a quick and brutal military coup over the Allende government and then installed a dictatorship that controlled the country until late 1998. Many Allende sympathizers - and all free-thinking Chilean citizens, for that matter - were forced into exile or put into concentration camps." "Ignacio Lopez-Calvo argues that this event shaped Chilean narrative into two structural forms that roughly adhere to a social chronology: liberationist narrative, "cathartic," journalistic testimonies that provide models for revolutionary behavior against authoritarianism; and demystifying narrative, which uses the events of 1973, as well as the colonial aspirations of European countries, as a "paradise lost" backdrop in which the characters are able to create their own non-political realities that become models of democratization." "At the same time, Lopez-Calvo demonstrates how Chilean writers in particular and Southern Cone writers in general - while sharing the same ontological sources with European literature - have struggled to define their own genre separate from North American and European narrative forms. He provides an exhaustive survey of major Chilean authors, including Jose Donoso, Fernando Algria, Ianos Magallanes, Hernan Valdes, Jorge Edwards, Ana Vasquez, Ariel Dorfman, and many others."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved