Laura Alcoba’s La casa de los conejos. (Re)constructing Identity in the Wake of Argentina’s Painful Legacy of State Terrorism

Abstract

Recent years have seen a growing number of novels that explore Argentina’s last military dictatorship from the point of view of the second generation, the children of the victims of state terrorism. Among them, La casa de los conejos by Laura Alcoba describes clandestine life, and the loss and trauma that accompany forced exile. This paper describes the difficulty involved in retelling that violent past, and how the narrative voice of the child protagonist functions as a tool to circumvent such obstacles. Finally, it examines how the self-reflective process of narrating these experiences is the basis for (re)constructing a fractured identity.