The narrative that becomes impossible: a comparative reading of two novels by José María Arguedas

Abstract

This article proposes a comparative reading of Los ríos profundos and El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo, by José María Arguedas. The aim is to explain the author’s impossibility of creating the latter book as a novel. This impediment in form would also imply the failure to experience one’s own identity in an increasingly fragmented Peru. Although it is still possible to preserve this identity in some specific spaces in the Andean world, in the coastal world, this experience becomes impossible to articulate.