Dystopian Nursing Homes. Two Literary Visions of Old Age in an Indifferent Society

The article is dedicated to the problem of urban marginalisation of the elderly reflected in literature. Through an evolutionary comparative approach, the treatment of the subject is shown in an Argentine novel by Ana Maria Shua, La muerte como efecto secundario, published in 1997, and a Spanish novel from the year 2020, Los ancianos siderales, by Luis Mateo Diez. Both books, concentrated around the issue of residential homes, can be perceived as prose of social denunciation. However, they represent different aesthetics and styles: an epistolary narrative in the form of a long monologue in the Argentine novel, belonging to the current of future anticipation fiction; and a choral literature of fractal aesthetics in the most recent book by the Spanish author, marked by a surrealist and oneiric approach. The article offers a comparison of the images of senectitude in both novels, then of the representations of care homes and, finally, describes the characteristics of the societies that allow and support this abusive system.