Tribunais de papel. O palimpsesto do romance policial e Sempreviva

Abstract

The aim of this study is to analyze the way in which detective novel as a genre shapes narratives that discuss the function of law and, therefore, the existence of a(n) (im)possible justice, when it is (not) put into existence by the institutions responsible for it. The starting point of this analysis will be Antônio Callado's novel, Sempreviva, written in 1981 during the transitional period towards democracy when the Amnesty Law, institutionalizing an official amnesia, makes it difficult to access reality and to process trauma, identifying, instead of a change, the persistence of the past into the present.