• This study is the only book in English to analyse Chilean memory culture using an interdisciplinary angle (memory studies, gender studies, literature in post-dictatorship Chile) • It includes comprehensive material, from award-winning authors (Diamela Eltit, Carlos Franz, Arturo Fontaine), rising stars of the Chilean literary scene (Nona Fernández) to first-time published novelists (Pía González, Fátima Sime) • It is the only book in English that focuses on women, memory and dictatorship in contemporary Chile from a cultural and literary perspective. • It offers a new way of comprehending Chilean memory culture, considering gender and literature as two key elements in this cultural approach to the recent past.

In what ways do the politics of memory perpetuate gendered images of those directly affected by political violence in Chile? Can the literary rewriting of painful experiences contest existing interpretations of national trauma and the portrayal of women in such discourses? How do women participate in the production of collective narratives of the past in the aftermath of violence? This book discusses the literary representation of women and their memory practices in the recent work of seven contemporary Chilean authors: Diamela Eltit, Carlos Franz, Pia Gonzalez, Fatima Sime, Arturo Fontaine, Pia Barros and Nona Fernandez. It locates their works in the context of a patriarchal politics of memory and commemorative culture in Chile and as part of a wider body of contested interpretations of General Augusto Pinochet's military dictatorship (1973-90). Through the analysis of novels that depict the dictatorial past through the memories of women, it is argued that these texts understand and explore remembrance as a process by which the patriarchal co-option of women's memories can be exposed and even contested in the aftermath of violence.