The preponderant role played by illness in Alfredo Bryce Echenique’s novels is exemplarily illustrated in Reo de nocturnidad (1997). This novel not only depicts a protagonist very similar to many other heroes created by the author, but also underlines the theme of Cuaderno de navegación en un sillón Voltaire. As in this iconic novel, the hero, a budding writer experiencing literary and sentimental failures as a voluntary exile in Paris, is afflicted by depression and various psychosomatic ailments that eventually prompt him to write down his painful experiences. Becoming a psychoanalytic cure that underpins the book itself, this narrative ironises a medical and cultural discourse prominent in the last decades of the twentieth century while sacrificing stereotypical interpretations of Peru in favour of its transnational projection.