Mala Onda

Mala onda is a highly acclaimed novel by Chilean novelist Alberto Fuguet. The novel brought Fuguet to the attention of Latin American and international critics, and is still perhaps the novel most associated with the author. It deals with a short period in the life of Matías Vicuña, a teenager who is fed up with what he perceives as the homogeneity and idiocy of his family and peers. The protagonist experiences a crisis throughout the course of the novel, somewhat paralleling that of Holden Caulfield, the protagonist of The Catcher in the Rye, a novel which Mala onda often references explicitly. In addition to the theme of the coming of age of a maladjusted youth, the novel relatedly deals heavily with North American consumer culture and the Chilean fetishization of it. The novel is furthermore set against the backdrop of growing opposition to Pinochet's dictatorship. The protagonist, of upper middle-class origins, must come to a political awareness that defies his upbringing.