Escribir historias desde una balsa
Sobrevivientes de Fernando Monacelli
abstract
They are in a raft – real or metaphorical – and from there they try to rescue their lives and their stories, the characters of Sobrevivientes (2012), a novel by Argentine writer and journalist Fernando Monacelli awarded with the Clarín Prize. The text is inserted in the group not very extensive, but at this point not negligible by number and literary quality, of narratives that thematise the Falkland Islands war and, like the previous ones, presents a strong anti-heroic vein. The novel combines the years of military dictatorship and the war that ended it and looks at the consequences of the two events from a private and intimate environment. It not only denies the heroism of the combatants but tacitly equates them, as victims, with the opponents of the regime. The analysis is proposed, on the one hand, to consider this new ideological position, on the other hand, to emphasise the formal aspects of the novel – located between epistolary writing and intimate diary – and in the relationship with the other narratives of the war of the South Atlantic.
Keywords: Contemporary Argentine literature • Malvinas War • Falklands War • Policies of memory • Testimony literature • Fernando Monacelli