The crime in the Latina American Black Novel “Between fascination and memory

Abstract

This academic paper presents an approach towards the Latin America Black Novel from two perspectives: the fascination and the memory This article establishes a critical sequence of the evolution of the genre: its regularities and literary changes since Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle to the most prominent representatives of the black genre in Latin America; stressing the contemporary condition of this appropriation and the development of this type of novels. Subsequently, the keys to this analysis are proposed taking as references Abril Rojo by the Peruvian Santiago Roncangliolo, Scorpio City by the Colombian Mario Mendoza and Plata Quemada by Ricardo Piglia, from Argentina. These literary works are finally proposed as a memory exercise where a clash of fictions occurs in which past events turn in a different order because other voices, other reports, testimonies, other crimes, other victims, other murderers and other detectives are incorporated in the picture. In this different order, the previous marks of memory collide with new marks proposed by the story. The resulting sparkle from this clash of fictions allows access to other knowledge about the past and its debts with the present and the future.