Of victims and executioners: polyphony in K.: relato de uma busca, by B. Kucinski

Abstract

The novel K.: relato de uma busca, by journalist and writer B. Kucinski, published by the first time in 2011, recounts the endless search by a father, the character K., for his daughter who "disappeared" during the Brazilian civil-military dictatorship (1964-1985). Such an arduous subject could not be narrated by just one voice of discourse or presented in a single textual genre, but rather through a manifestation with different voices of discourse, as exemplified by the enunciators of the chapters "Paixão, Compaixão", "Os desamparados" and "A cadela", the first of which is narrated by a sister who deals with being disowned by her family because she got involved with an executioner to save her brother, the second by a father who tells of the loss of his son and, finally, the third is narrated by an executioner of the military regime who, after kidnapping A. and her husband, is in charge of looking after her. and her husband is in charge of looking after Baleia, the couple's dog.  In view of the above, the aim is to analyse Kucinski's (2016) work, anchored in Bakhtin's (2010) concept of "polyphony", in order to understand the way in which the different voices permeate the narrative, sometimes related to the victims and sometimes related to the executioners who appear in the novel.