Literature, Globalization and the Nomadic Attitude. The Parallel Lives of Roberto Bolaño and Rodrigo Rosa

Abstract

This article studies the process of constructing an alternative identity to national identity in two contemporary Latin American writers: the Chilean Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) and the Guatemalan Rodrigo Rey Rosa (1958). In the last two decades of the twentieth century, they developed their works outside their home countries, integrating nomadic condition as an essential element of their fictions, (auto)biographical narratives and public images. It is true that in both writers the influence of modernism and the avant-garde poetry can be clearly seen, but it also seems clear that new contexts produced by post-modernity and globalization have given their nomadic attitude a distinct and particular shape that may enable us to understand in a different way the situation of an important sector of Latin America contemporary literature and the new position of some writers of this region in our global world.