MORONGA , BY HORACIO CASTELLANOS MOYA, AND THE DIVERGENCE OF LATIN AMERICAN NOIR CARMEN LUNA SELLE ´ S ABSTRACT Taking Moronga (2018), by Salvadorian author Horacio Castellanos Moya, as a point of departure, this article focuses on the reinterpretation of main- stream crime fiction in Latin American terms. This new approach is made from both formal and thematic perspectives. Moronga is structurally frag- mented; the traditional detective figure has disappeared, and the plot does not revolve around a single crime but denounces a society at large which is characterized by paranoid surveillance. The reinterpretation of the crime fiction genre in Latin American terms has opened up two different strands of noir: firstly, the so-called ‘post-neopolicial’ where crime is a mere backdrop to formal experimentation, and secondly, what Ricardo Piglia refers to as ‘ficcio ´n paranoica’ [paranoiac fiction]. Moronga is a good example of both these strands, making it an appropriate case study to analyse the ways in which Hispanic literature deviates from classic Anglophone crime fiction (particularly the North American hardboiled tradition). Keywords: Central America; El Salvador; violence; testimony; paranoiac fiction; post-neopolicial MORONGA (2018), by Honduran-born and Salvadorian-raised author Horacio Castellanos Moya (b. Tegucigalpa, 1957), is a novel clearly motivated by different characteristics of the North American hardboiled tradition. 1 However, for a number of reasons these characteristics do not allow us unproblematically to classify this text as hardboiled. Indeed, the author himself has asserted that he wanted to challenge crime fiction orthodoxy with this novel in order to escape from straightforward clas- sifications, whilst also acknowledging the importance of noir aesthetics in his writing. In an interview given by Castellanos Moya to Damia ´n Blas Vives for the magazine Evaristo cultural, the author confirms that his intention was to make use of the crime fiction tradition in order to question the idea of law and order, responding to the tensions found in recent Central American history: Esto se da naturalmente, en el sentido de que yo procedo de un paı ´s con un Estado bastante fallido. Como dije alguna vez: El Salvador no tiene un Estado fallido, tiene un # The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press for the Court of the University of St Andrews. All rights reserved. The University of St Andrews is a charity registered in Scotland: No. SC013532. Forum for Modern Language Studies Vol. 56, No. 3, doi: 10.1093/fmls/cqaa022 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/fmls/article/56/3/347/5894751 by guest on 04 December 2020