Quel che resta dell esilio: Tropical sol da liberdade di Ana Maria Machado

Abstract

This article analyses the experience of exile narrated by the Brazilian writer Ana Maria Machado in Tropical sol da liberdade. Published in 1988, the novel portrays the terrible events that characterised the authoritarian military government that ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985. Through the story of Lena, a journalist who chooses to live in exile to escape from military dictatorship’s abuses, Ana Maria Machado fictionalises her own real experience in order to process an individual and collective trauma caused by authoritarianism. The combination of memory and fiction provides a different perspective on personal and historical events: the exile deprives Lena of her rights and certainties, but the need to tell the truth about her story – as well as the ones of other victims – turns the condition of exiled into a sort of external point of view. Hence, the narration of the tragic events experienced during the military dictatorship brings out a new sense of belonging and asserts the power of literature over violence and oblivion.