Identity on exposure: Roberto Bolaño and the palimpsest of Latin American solitude

Abstract

This essay aims at studying the powerful but, at first glance, carefully hidden web of intertextual allusions that links Roberto Bolaño’s oeuvre to the so-called “boom” narrative series. Indeed, the Chilean author establishes with the founding narrators of the local canon an intergenerational dialogue between equals that, exceeding both the need of fetichist imitation and the limits of parodic deconstruction, critically redefines “Latin American identity”, bringing that notorious topic to a new evolutional stage.