In 2009, a contagious jingle spread throughout Ecuadorian media, from TV to radio to social networks. It was the second year of Rafael Correa’s administration. His leftist project, the so-called Revolución ciudadana, was not only the leading force of the political scene of the Andean country but also a propaganda-producing powerhouse. The jingle was one of the mass communication products of Correa’s party and boasted lyrics that stressed the nationalistic vein of its agenda:

On TV and social media, the jingle was accompanied by a video of several Ecuadorian musicians performing in emblematic Ecuadorian locations, from the streets of Guayaquil to Quito’s old town, from the Inca ruins of Ingapirca in the vicinity of Cuenca to the beach town of Montañita. While the lyrics and the images promoted a nation-centred message, the music told a different story. Intriguingly and to the discontent of many, the music was an adaptation of The Beatles’ Hey Jude. In the jingle, the popular chant na-na-na, na, na was replaced by the awkwardly rhymed words re-vo-lu-ción ciudadana, ciudadana.

Correa’s political jingle – unselfconsciously blending a populist message focused on the sovereignty of Ecuador with a globally recognisable song by a British band – helps introduce the issues addressed by this book. The present study explores the literary representation of Ecuador in the twenty-first century, arguing that contemporary Ecuadorian fiction reimagines Ecuador as a nation marked by a constant interaction with the world beyond its borders. The central argument I develop is that contemporary Ecuadorian writers not only reflect today’s Ecuador in their novels. They also actively construct it from a common ground of experience where, since the late 1990s, interactions and exchanges among Ecuador and other nations are more common than ever before in the country’s history and shape the everyday life of society.

This book’s concern with the literary reimagining of contemporary Ecuador responds to Beatriz Sarlo’s call to explore what she calls the ‘eroded space of the nation’ in Latin America ‘in order to understand a two-century history that cannot be fashionably dismissed and swept away by the thrust of a concept such as globalisation’.