Abstract

The work of the Peruvian writer Cronwell Jara is an essential reference point for scholars interested in the national fiction of the 1980s, a fiction that, however, is often associated with the political violence that shook the country in those years, an aspect without any doubt valid, but not exclusive. The 80s are not very happy years for the history of Peru: to the problem of a fast and uncontrolled growth of the city of Lima, are added the violence of the terrorist movement “Sendero Luminosoµ and the repressive actions of the army. The writers are not indifferent to these changes, which are reflected in their literature, moreover, they themselves are often of popular social extraction and come from the province. Among them, Cronwell Jara, who was born into a modest family that moved to Lima, has access to academic and intellectual training and soon adheres to the “new urban narrativeµ that has as its object the conflictual reality of the barriadas (the Peruvian favelas). Jara’s work is therefore closely linked to social reality, but, at the same time, his texts go beyond any kind of literature of social realism, of denunciation; Jara wants to experiment new elements, alternative techniques, in search of an identity of its own, as he shows, with skillful skill, in his first short novel, Montacerdos, which effectively sums up the writer’s artistic and political commitment, how his literature is a place of resistance, a “postutopic presentµ