In light of the transformations in Ecuadorian society triggered by the Feriado Bancario and its long-lasting consequences, one may ask: how is the Ecuadorian nation reimagined in fiction after 1998? I consider this to be a vital question for understanding contemporary Ecuador because when we reflect on the history of Latin America, we see that nations are built – and, as such, are to be found – in narrative. As I discuss in the first chapter of this book, nation and narration go hand in hand in the making of Latin American nations. From novels presenting romances that function as national allegories, as observed by Doris Sommer, to the importance of intellectuals who put their writing to the service of national and political projects, as noted by Carlos Altamirano, narrative has had a prominent role in the nation-building processes of the region. Twenty-first century Ecuador is not exempt from this logic.

At the same time, by shedding light on contemporary fiction, it is also possible to fill a gap left by the majority of the academic readings on the cultural responses to the economic crisis, which have overwhelmingly focused on the figure of the migrant. In the introduction to his compilation of ‘narrativas, autorías y lecturas teorizadas de las migraciones ecuatorianas’, Diego Falconí Trávez argues that the numerous displacements caused by the 1998 economic crisis triggered the emergence of a series of discourses centred on the evaluation of the ‘cuerpos de origen ecuatoriano que han ido llegando (y regresando) durante varios años a diferentes destinos’. These discourses, he says, have taken the form of scholarly studies, documentaries, films and TV shows that give form to a body of work that frames the understanding of the Ecuadorian migrant as a particular type of subjectivity. Although Falconí Trávez’s intention is clearly far from making an exhaustive list, it is still surprising that he fails to mention literature among the cultural responses to the migration phenomenon. This is especially the case if we are to consider that there is a substantial number of novels focused on the issue. Nonetheless, even more surprising than such omission is the almost undivided attention that the study of migrant subjectivities has received among the manifold consequences of the Feriado Bancario.