ABSTRACT
The humanisation of the perpetrator in this novel arguably veers into the characterisation of Nino’s father, Antonino, and his colleagues, fellow guardia civil, as victims, which achieves an ethically fraught equalisation between the victims of Francoist repression and their Nationalist torturers that could obviate the need for perpetrator atonement. In this chapter, I analyse both the issues of perpetrator suffering and the multifaceted aspects of the child’s role in the perpetrator moral universe, which range from an affected individual to an active agent, thus disputing the view of the child as a victim or bystander in post-conflict situations. Based on a mélange of literary reception theory, and Spanish literary and pedagogical history, I examine the functions of reading, the intradiegetic references to foreign and Spanish authors, , and their importance in understanding the perpetrator figure.
