Snivci a trosečníci – Nemrava Daniel (2014)

How does the political situation reflect in contemporary literature? This question is attempted to be answered by Daniel Nemrava's book, in which he presents some prose works by Latin American writers, including Argentine Manuel Puig, Cuban Reinaldo Arenas and Abilio Estévez, Nicaraguan Sergio Ramírez, and Chilean globetrotter Roberto Bolaño. Nemrava places their works in the political context of Latin American dictatorships of the 1970s and the fragile democracies of the 1980s and 1990s. He highlights the extreme politicization of the literary field in the 1970s, which later transformed into fleeting euphoria, a reflection of traumas, and after the fall of the 'Iron Curtain', into resignation, disillusionment, disappointment, and disorientation. The selected prose reflects themes of power, violence, and dictatorship through various narrative strategies. The possibility or impossibility of depicting unfreedom and the communicability of experiences, which earlier led to what Adorno called the crisis of narration, is a common denominator of these novels. Nemrava's study not only illustrates how the political context directly influences the development of literature in the region but also offers an original interpretation of the fascinating literary universe that is contemporary Latin American literature.