The encryption of mourning in formas de volver a casa by alejandro Zambra, Fuenzalida by Nona Fernández and La edad del perro by Leonardo Sanhueza

Abstract

This article examines the novels Formas de volver a casa (2011) by Alejandro Zambra, Fuenzalida (2012) by Nona Fernández and La edad del perro (2014) by Leonardo Sanhueza. These novels display the exercise of an immanent memory of daily life intimated by a mournful narrative subject who, from a neoliberal present, turns to the traumatic past of Chile's civic-military dictatorship. This article argues that the novels' representation of early childhood and adolescence during the dictatorship unfolds in a persistent scriptural elaboration, or encryption, of a state of melancholy perpetuated by the work of mourning.