This article deals with the problem of time in the trilogy Historia de una absolucion familiar, by German Marin. As a hypothesis, I claim that in his work and in his author persona, both marked by melancholy come together many of the contradictions that have been affecting the relationship of our contemporary narrative with the past. If on the one hand, it raises a criticism of history, memory and tradition, on the other, it tends to display a strongly deterministic perspective on the past, in addition to a conservative and patriarchal pruritus. In the specific case of the Marin trilogy, we can say it oscillates between the subversion of "the genealogical imperative" (Drechsel. 1978) and its nostalgic evocation. Finally, I interrogate the possible relations between the work of German Marin and second-generation literature.