Belén Gopegui’s literature in crisis: Anticipating the literatura de la crisis?

In recent years, and in response to the global financial crisis of 2008, Spain has seen the surge of a new literary sub-genre, that of literatura de la crisis: novels, essays and short stories attempting to reflect and make sense of the crisis and its effects in the country. In this article, I propose that there is an alternative literature in crisis that, while at times overlapping with the aforementioned literatura de la crisis, also antedates it. Such literature shows a concern with socio-economic phenomena such as unemployment and job insecurity, precarity, the effects of globalization or the rise in inequality long before these issues became fashionable. In this article, I analyse four novels by Belén Gopegui that predate the crisis in order to trace the key features of her literature in crisis ‐ chief among them is her meta-literary exploration of her own assimilation of (or possible complicity with) the hegemonic discourses she seeks to critique. Finally, I contend that the vindication of this literature in crisis is timely and relevant not only because of its connection to the booming sub-genre of literatura de la crisis but also because it is only through the radical interrogation of the status quo carried out by this author that the full emancipatory potential of literature and culture may be realized.