The Deserts of the Other Side: The Desert as a Formative space in Ciudades desiertas by José Agustín y Road Story by Albe

Abstract

This article studies two Latin American coming-of-age novels that have placed their formative journeys beyond the northern border of the Latin America. The not-so-young protagonists of José Agustin's Ciudades desiertas (Mexico) and Alberto Fuguet's Road Story (Chile) flee towards the deserts of the United States in search of an epic seen many times in American films in arder to give meaning to their disenchanted present. The objective of this study is to analyze the ways in which these novels represent bodies in transit through deserts as a formative process that questions what their protagonists understand as individual and national identity.