Desarraigo y nostalgia: el motivo de la vuelta a casa en tres novelas chilenas recientes

This article aims at clarifying the ways in which the memories of the Chilean dictatorship have changed in postdictatorial narrative. We will see how some of the most contemporary writers dissociate themselves from an anti-nostalgic position, characteristic of the narrative of the nineties. In the novels Av. 10 de Julio Huamachuco, Camanchaca, and Formas de volver a casa, written respectively by Nona Fernández, Diego Zúñiga and Alejandro Zambra, the turn towards a more nostalgic literature is made visible in the recurrent motive of the return home. The distinction made by Svetlana Boym in The future of Nostalgia, between a restorative and a reflective form of nostalgia, leads us to consider these narratives to be of the second type. The novels written by Fernández, Zúñiga and Zambra are not completely opposite to those written in the first years after dictatorship. They share with the previous novels a profound sensation of displacement. However, while the first postdictatorial novels stress on melancholia and the impossibility of nation and home, in the more contemporary ones we can find an emphasis in the nostalgic search for these concepts. Key words: nostalgia, postdictatorial literature, Nona Fernández, Diego Zúñiga, Alejandro Zambr