Since 2007, the Spanish literary panorama has been shaken up by a mutant trend led by writers Agustín Fernández Mallo and Vicente Luis Mora. The two writers claim they have conveyed an aesthetic paradigm into Spanish fiction which is bringing it into line with the social, economic and technological mutations that are changing the way people relate with reality. By analysing a corpus of seven different texts, the aim of this study is a better understanding as to how a literature may claim its style has adapted narrative limits to the complexity of the contemporary world. The approach, which is largely literary, though adapts narratology tools to the porous borders of the study’s corpus, explores the formal features of the texts with the aim of throwing light on the manner in which these works relate to reality. The mutant novel evokes, quotes and uses the language of visual arts, music, architecture or science. The pregnance of this on literary works is discussed in the second part of this study. The third part focuses on the impact of these mutations on novels’ socio-cultural environment (writer, book, reader). With the view of offering an up-to-date understanding of contemporary literature, we question the Spanish mutations of the “telling tool” by pondering on the pertinence of notions such as plastic style, rhizomatic stories, the aesthetics of quotes or augmented books.
