Urban Spaces in Contemporary Latin American Literature

This collection of essays studies the depiction of contemporary urban space in twenty-first century Latin American fiction. The contributors to this volume seek to understand the characteristics that make the representation of the postmodern city in a Latin American context unique. The chapters focus on cities from a wide variety of countries in the region, highlighting the cultural and political effects of neoliberalism and globalization in the contemporary urban scene. Twenty-first century authors share an interest for images of ruins and dystopian landscapes and their view of the damaging effects of the global market in Latin America tends to be pessimistic. As the book demonstrates, however, utopian elements or “spaces of hope” can also be found in these narrations, which suggest the possibility of transforming a capitalist-dominated living space.

1. The Spatial Turn and Twenty-First Century Latin American Fiction (José Eduardo González).- 2. Beyond the Ruins of the Organized City: Urban Experiences through the Metro in Contemporary Mexican Literature (Liesbeth François).- 3. Spectral Spaces: Haunting in the Latin American City (Marta Sierra).- 4. A Tale of Three Cities. Urban Space in the Crack Novels (1995-97) (Tomás Regalado López).- 5. The Night That Repeats Itself: Social Dystopia in Managua, Salsa City (¡Devórame otra vez!), by Franz Galich (Magdalena Perkowska).- 6. Urban Debris and Networking Imperialism in Un Arte de hacer ruinas by Antonio José Ponte (Eduard Arriaga).- 7. Place Making in the Solitude of the City: Valeria Luiselli's Los ingrávidos (Cecily Raynor).- 8. Dislocated Subjects in the Global City: Santiago Gamboa’s Hotel Pekín (Camilo A. Malagón).- 9. Roberto Bolaño’s Urban Labyrinths: The City as Metaphor for the Silent Universe (Juan Pablo Melo).- 10. The Tourist Aesthetic and Empire in Rodrigo Fresán’s Mantra and Jardines de Kensington (Timothy R. Robbins).

José Eduardo González is Associate Professor of Spanish and Ethnic Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA. He is author of Appropriating Theory: Ángel Rama’s Critical Work (2017).

Timothy R. Robbins is Associate Professor of Spanish at Drury University, USA. He is co-author of Pop Culture in Latin America and the Caribbean (2015). He co-edited, with José Eduardo González, New Trends in Latin American Narrative: Post-National Literatures and the Canon (Palgrave, 2014), a collection of critical essays on recent Latin American fiction.