Juan José Millás

The five novels written by Juan Jos Mill s between 1988 and 1998 (El desorden de tu nombre; La soledad era esto, Volver a casa; Tonto, muerto, bastardo e invisible; and El orden alfab tico) display an increasing preoccupation with a limited number of themes, principally identity and social criticism. They also demonstrate the constant reiteration of a specific group of motifs, an increasing use of metafictional devices, and the use of bizarre or mentally disturbed protagonists. Mill s presents writing as the compulsive expression of obsessive thought. This book explains Mill s's literary signs as corresponding to the clinical symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Using Fredric Jameson's concept of the political unconscious, the obsessive-compulsive aesthetic is found to constitute Mill s's individual manifestation or working-through of an anxiety present in the collective unconscious of Spain and provoked by the rapid political, social, economic, and cultural changes experienced during those years.