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Title: Disaster management in a dystopian novel: A case study of JJ Amaworo Wilson’s Damnificados

 

Vol. 11(1), 2023, pp. 7-16.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.46687/KBKJ2646.

 

Author: Antony Hoyte-West

About the author: Antony Hoyte-West is an interdisciplinary researcher focusing on linguistics, literature, and translation studies. He is particularly interested in historical and contemporary language policy, sociological aspects of the translation and interpreting professions, literary translation studies, and institutional translation and interpreting. A qualified translator and conference interpreter from several languages into his native English, he holds a doctorate in linguistics and postgraduate degrees in languages and social sciences from the universities of St Andrews, Oxford, Galway, and Silesia, as well as two diplomas in piano performance. He is the author of forty-four publications and has presented his research at international conferences in a range of countries.

e-mail: antony.hoyte.west@gmail.com ;             

ORCID iD:  https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4410-6520 

 

Link: https://silc.fhn-shu.com/issues/2023-1/SILC_2023_Vol_11_Issue_1_007-016_10.pdf  

Citation (APA style): Hoyte-West, А. (2023). Disaster management in a dystopian novel: A case study of JJ Amaworo Wilson’s Damnificados. Studies in Linguistics, Culture, and FLT, 11(1), 7-16. https://doi.org/10.46687/KBKJ2646.

Abstract: Several years ago, the large number of people living illegally in the so-called Tower of David, an abandoned high-rise building in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas, caught the attention of the world’s media. Based on this unlikely source of inspiration, a similar such skyscraper forms the centrepiece to Damnificados, a dystopian novel by JJ Amaworo Wilson, which was first published in 2016. Set in a nameless country, this innovative and engaging novel frequently turns to magic realism in its depiction of the ‘damnificados’, a motley crew of squatters who are under constant threat from external perils, both natural and man-made. Under the guidance of the novel’s hero, Nacho, strategies to manage these threats are developed and implemented, with significant implications for the building’s inhabitants and their welfare. Accordingly, this exploratory contribution aims to identify and apply a relevant disaster management framework to the first of the many calamities portrayed in the novel, which is where the building and the city surrounding it are inundated by a catastrophic flood. In evaluating the inhabitants’ response through the lens of the framework, this study thereby provides an interdisciplinary overview of how disaster management strategies can be represented in literary texts.

Keywords: flood, crisis management, PPRR model, Torre de David, dystopian fiction, emergency response

 

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