Precarious Characters: Neoliberal Instability in the Work of Alejandro Zambra

Abstract: This article argues that Alejandro Zambra's early works refashion the form of the novel to represent the main symptoms of the Chilean post-dictatorship and the country's embrace of neoliberalism. By reading Bonsái (2006), La vida privada de los árboles (2007), and Formas de volver a casa (2011), I suggest that Zambra enacts the unfinished nature of Chile's democratic transition through the narrative format of the draft, the temporality of waiting, and the inspection of the gaps of historical memory. Moreover, he adopts a fragmentary aesthetic form to track the post-dictatorship generation's adjustment to neoliberalism as a permanent state of crisis.