TRAMA AND TRAMA DISCORSE: PE RVIAN FICTION AFTER THE cvr Violence and the Novel Kent Dickson Califoia State Polytechnic University-Pomona Since the all of the Fujmori govement, and particularly since 2003 when the Coision de la Verdad y Reconciliacion (CVR) issued its inal report, jonalists, human rights workers, and academics have amply documented atrocities committed by the Peruvian ilitary during the so called intenal war g ainst the Sendero Luminoso guerrilla group. Fiction writers and other arists have also taken up the theme in a big way. By conrast, during the quarter century preceding the CVR, a marginal (or perhaps marginalized) rickle of stories and novels on the topic appeared, many of them linked to neoindigenismo and to the literary let. 81 ile some did eature main characters who sufer torture and assassination at the hands of the Auerzas del orden,@ as a whole this literature did not bring a sustained indictment against the govement or human rights abuses. Mainsream novels that treated the war, such as Mario Vargas Llosa=s 1993 Lituma en los Andes, tended to ocus attention (as did much of the press coverage of the period) on the monsrous nature of Sendero Luminoso, largely giving the ilitary a pass. 82 In recent years, however, the rend has been reversed. Several popular, critically acclamed novels have taken up the theme of govement crimes, as well as those committed by Sendero, in a way that explicitly adopts the paradigm of traumatiation on which the CVR partially depended. These include Alonso Cueto=s La hora azul (2005), winner of the Premio Herralde de Novela; Santi g o Roncagliolo=s Abril rojo (2006), winner of the Preio Alaguara de Novela, and his novelized chronicle of Abimael Guman and the Sendero Luminoso, L, cuarta espaa (2007); the English-language Lost Ciy Radio (2007) by Daniel Alarcon, published in Spanish by Alaguara in 2008 (as well as the titular story of Alarcon=s 2005 debut collection War by Candlelight); and Un lugar llamado oreja de perro (2008) by Ivan �eral useul histories and anthologies of this fiction have been published by Gustavo Faveron - ·Petriau, Mark R. Cox, Miguel Gutierez and even Santi g o Roncagliolo (see ACocaina@) in the past decade. 82 Carlos Ivan Degregori describes the collusion between the press and the vrious presidential regimescall of which, despite their great diferences, cultivated srategic zones of orgetting arond govement abuses: ASin mayor esuerzo, los medios [... ] construyeron [Sendero Luminoso] como el Otro monsruoso y la opinion publica atemorizada compartio esa imagen y contribuyo activamente a dibujarla. El regimen logro asi un margen de maniobra suiciente como para seleccionar ciertos olvidos esrategicos y ratar de implantarlos en la memoria nacional. Y Esa voluntad de olvido de los *excesos+ represivos del Estado ue comparida, al menos por un tiempo, por impotantes sectores de la ciudadania@ (20).