Places of Memory in El palacio de la risa by Germán Marín and Nocturno de Chile by Roberto Bolaño

Abstract

This article explores the way in which Germán Marín and Roberto Bolaño reconstruct the same Chilean lieu de mémoire: the private house that was used as a torture house during the military dictatorship. A comparison between the architecture of a ‘real’ place of memory, Parque por la Paz Villa Grimaldi, and the houses that Bolaño and Marín reconstructed in words, reveals the importance of nostalgia and the uncanny. These two emotions allow the authors to say the unsayable, and to adopt a critical attitude towards the recent past and the postdictatorial present.