Whatever happened to Castana, Matilde, Sergio, Domingos, Ariosto...? The missing persons as a formal principle in Chico Buarque's novels

Abstract

This paper intends to investigate the role of the missing persons in Chico Buarque's novels, combining literary form and social-historical process. This category have been seen as a central mark in the author's writing, having being repeated in novels such as Benjamim (1995), Leite derramado (2009) e O irmão alemão (2014). Therefore, taking these narratives, this paper purpose itself to examine the missing persons not only as a mark of substance, whether they are political disappearances or not, but also as a structural data from the novels and also as a mark of a contemporary literature that elaborates a repressed past.