El hombre de Montserrat: writings on violence in the latin american crime fiction

Abstract

The article adresses the novel El hombre de Montserrat, written by the Guatemalan writer Dante Liano and recognized within the genre of crime fiction, as a precursory model for a narrative that established a way of rewriting the history of violence in Central American countries in both fictional and theoretical terms. Dante Liano’s successful reception has turned the novel into a reference of the Central American literature of the nineties. This is due to the fact that his narrative is replete with mechanisms that were seen in the best works of the previous Latin American narrative, far from the great discourses, by a displaying genre hybridization, a parodic transgression or lexical localism. This article analyses the interweaving of genres and the subversion of the plot, the characters and the rewriting of the history against the postulates of the classic detective novel.