Urban landscape in the contemporary Spanish narrative: Antonio Muñoz Molina's novels

Abstract

The preeminent urban model generates heterogeneous area of exchange, coexistence and competition characteristic of our time. Art and literature –particularly, the novel– find one of their principal references in the urban landscape and, from multiple perspectives, they frequently tackle topics inherent in it: the problematic relation between the individual and society, the loneliness and anonymity among the crowd, freedom and cosmopolitanism, the hope of the immigrant, overcrowding and crime… The city in the modern novel gets to acquire its own voice and personality, as if it were just another character. And in recent decades, we have observed a new inflection: dismissing physical objectivity, many writers project their own subjectivity onto the urban environment, drawing a literary landscape in which “myth, invention and reality” are merged. The current work gives an account on this, providing the example of several Spanish novelists, Antonio Muñoz Molina in particular.