This essay focuses on an interpretative lecture about the representation of memory in Alejandro Zambra’s Formas de volver a casa (2011). Thinking shipwreck metaphor and its imaginary as the axis that makes the sense of loss throughout the novel, this work analyses three thematic forms that give the idea of memory: body, space and writing. Shipwreck and memory move in counter rhythm in Zambra’s novel, creating a unique synecdoche of the contemporary subject’s political defeat.