Metaphor, allegory and nostalgia: The house in the novels written by Alejandro Zambra

Abstract

The title of the third novel by Alejandro Zambra, Formas de volver a casa, presents the house as the centre of the narration. This article examines first the house, as it is described in Zambra’s novels, as a metaphor for literature, and then as the centripetal point of a series of representations of postdictatorial experience. The first part of the article is based on the theories of Heidegger and Deleuze and Guattari about living. In the second part, the concept of reflexive nostalgia, developed by Boym, permits us to consider the narrative movements around Zambra’s house as “allegories” of postdictatorial experience. Therefore, the article aims at determining the position of Zambra’s literary production in light of the concepts of allegory forged by Avelar and De Man.