Novela y ficción. (A propósito de Una novela criminal de Jorge Volpi)

Abstract

On the basis of the Aristotelian division between the story of things happened and those that could happen, which has traditionally opposed the writing of history to that of poetic creation, this article goes into the derivations of some concepts that arise in the light of this dichotomy, such as those of literature and poetry, or fiction and novel, in the different ways of approaching reality. From this view, this article proposes a reading of Una novela criminal by Jorge Volpi that explores the possibilities of the novel to constitute itself as a means of investigating the fictional aspects of any representation of the real. The mastery of Volpi’s non-fictional novel consists not so much in decanting the difference between fiction and truth but rather in making shape of the limit itself.