Collisions with History

Latin American intellectuals have traditionally debated their regions history, never with so much agreement as in the fiction, commentary, and scholarship of the late twentieth century. Collisions with History shows how fictional histories of discovery and conquest, independence and early nationhood, and the recent authoritarian past were purposeful revisionist collisions with received national versions. These collisions occurred only because of El Boom, thus making Latin Americas greatest literary movement a historical phenomenon as well. Frederick M. Nunn discusses the cataclysmic view of history conveyed in Boom novels and examines the thought and self-perception of selected authors whose political activism enhanced the appeal of their workshistorical and otherwise: Alejo Carpentier, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel Garca Mrquez, and Augusto Roa Bastos; Julio Cortzar, Isabel Allende, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Darcy Ribeiro. Collisions with History demonstrates how their commentary on history, literature, politics, and international affairs reveals a conscious sense of purpose. From between the lines of their nonfiction emerges a consensus that outside forces have defined as well as controlled Latin Americas history. Professor Nunn also suggests that, with novelists now no longer very interested in colliding with history, it may fall to social scientists to speak for what remains of the regions past in the New World Order.