Notes on Authorship, Death, and Reception in Tatiana Salem Levy's A Chave de Casa

Abstract

The novel A chave de casa (2025), by Tatiana Salem Levy, falls within the field of contemporary autofiction by challenging the notion of authorship through the construction of a narrative immediacy that is both present and unstable. Drawing on recognizable biographical elements, the work undermines the stability of the authorial identity and shifts to the reader the task of reconstructing meaning and negotiating the boundaries between experience and fiction. This article aims to analyze how the narrative enacts the theoretical paradox of the death of the author and his return in the form of a textual figure dependent on the reader’s interpretation. Methodologically, an extensive review on the concept of autofiction is carried out before the interpretative analysis of the novel. It is argued that autofiction, far from restoring authorial authority, transforms the reader into an active producer of meaning, highlighting reading as a privileged space for the constitution of authorship and literary meaning.