Voice and Palimpsest in Pedro Angel Palou’s Novels of the Mexican Revolution

ABSTRACT Considering Pedro Angel Palou has been a staunch proponent of the tradition of “continuity and renovation” in Latin American literature and a prolific writer who has created novels in different genres and registers, it is important to pay attention to his historical novels written at the time where there was an explosion of historical texts as part of the commemoration of the Centenary of the Mexican Revolution. The purpose of this study is to examine the novels Zapata, Pobre patria mía: La novela de Porfirio Díaz and No me dejen morir así: Recuerdos póstumos de Pancho Villa and trace Palou’s trajectory within the tradition of historical novel authors in Mexico by establishing the conversations these novels engage in with some of his previous experimental novels, canonical novels of the Mexican Revolution, and novels and poetry from some canonical Latin American authors. This study draws in postmodern theory and contemporary historiography with an emphasis on palimpsest. Relying on intertextuality, Palou creates complex structures and convokes diverse voices, both literary and not literary, to bring to the fore long-lasting social problems that Mexican society has endured until present times. The ubiquitous autoreferential underlying in the three novels signals the role of the literary writer as a preserver of memory providing for a narrative that is much more ludic than Palou’s previous works. I concluded that the political implications of the juxtaposition of history and fiction in these three novels deserve further analysis.