In this thesis I investigate the way politics, revolution and dictatorship are shown in Roberto Bolaño's Distant Star (Estrella distante) and Vladimir Kavčič's The Record (Zapisnik). Both novels are situated in unstable and violent periods of history. Distant Star is situated in the period of Chile's coup d'état, Pinochet's military dictatorship (1973-1990) and continues in the period of transition, while the commission hearings in The Record take place in 1970, with the testifiers requestioning the events of World War II and its aftermath on Slovenian territory. In the first section the thesis presents the political and historical context of both countries, which serves for a better understanding of the relevant periods and helps to better understand the literary texts. In both cases the historical setting is marked with violence, repression, massacres and disappeared or missing people. The second section offers summary of each novel, analyses their structure and highlights the problem of installing them into a certain genre. The main part of the thesis focuses on the question of truth, its relativity and inaccessibility as well as the requestioning the truth of the past. I enquire into how politics, revolution and dictatorship are represented in the respective literary texts and their discussion of these historical events. Moreover, I define the (auto)fictional and intertextual elements in Distant Star and The Record as well as their role in understanding the novels and their historical references.
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