The Return of the Tortured Ghost in Harkaitz Cano’s Novel <i>Twist</i> (2011)

This article investigates the issue of political torture and forced disappearances within the context of the Basque political conflict as represented in the novel Twist (2011) by Harkaitz Cano. Although all violence is traumatic, the violence implicit in the systematic infliction of pain and humiliation on the state’s political ‘enemies’ by members of its security forces, and, in some cases, their enforced disappearance, translates into a traumatic memory that afflicts not only the victims but also the society represented by that state. Unresolved traumatic memory installs itself in the collective consciousness and generates ghosts that haunt the living and future generations. One way they may be exorcised is by the cultural transmission of the events that caused the trauma through literary fiction.