Autofiction as a counterpoint for the “historical novel” of winners: hybridism and metafiction in La casa del dolor ajeno (The house of others’ sorrow, 2015), by Julián Herbert

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to remove the concept of autofiction from the autobiographical genre so as to weigh its relation to a non self-related referential genre: the historiographical chronicle. This whole idea is conducted through Julian Herbert’s La casa del dolor ajeno (The house of others’ sorrow, 2015). In this text, what appears to be a chronicle of the early Twentieth century sinophobic genocide in Mexico turns out to be a hybrid artefact (combining chronicle, novel and essay) built over the tensions resulting from the coexistence of objectivity and subjectivity. The self-fabulation of Herbert’s autorial voice, astride between the reporter and the writer, finally takes over the text. Through this paradox, autofiction turns itself into both the defence and the criticism of subjectivity as the only possible (and impossible) way to understand the world.