Chilean Writers in Exile: Eight Short Novels

by Fernando Alegría (Editor)

Book by

162 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 182

About the author

Escritor, crítico literario y diplomático. Se formó en letras en la Universidad de Chile, y se trasladó a los Estados Unidos, donde obtuvo una maestría en la Universidad Estatal de Bowling Green y el doctorado en la Universidad de California en Berkeley en 1947. Ya era entonces un autor reconocido, sobre todo tras la publicación en 1943 de Lautaro, joven Libertador de Arauco. Regresó luego a Chile, donde fue una figura central en los grupos de escritores nucleados en la Universidad de Concepción. El éxito masivo le llegaría con Caballo de Copas (1957), novela que el filósofo y escritor español Fernando Savater considera la mejor sobre carrera de caballos escrita en español.

Reviews

[Peggy · Rating 2 out of 5]

An uneven collection of short stories by Chilean writers. My favorites were the first three, representing the realistic tradition, in which September 11, 1973 and its aftermath are described in all their horrible reality. "The First Days" by Alfonso Gonzalez Dagnino is an unbearably tense description of the coup and immediately after. The action follows a group of workers who engage in armed defense of their factory against the military forces. Another story, "Barbed Wire Fence," by Anibal Quijada, takes place in a concentration camp in the far south of the country, a place where, "even the soldiers, covered with thick capes and fur-lined boots felt the intense cold of that frozen Magallanes night." Later stories are less coherent, their exiled characters existing in a hallucinatory, traumatized state.

Published in 1982, the book is typeset in a style that I found difficult to read from, and the stream of consciousness narratives found in some of the stories were seldom relieved by paragraph breaks or dialogue, making me quit them in frustration. Additionally, the wording at many points was awkward and it was hard to tell whether this was poetic style or simply poor decisions by the translator. The final story, by Ariel Dorfman, is an amusing piece built around a San Francisco sex strike and the agony of three Chilean cadets. Though seemingly light in theme, these representatives of the 1970s military exude menace, as they scheme to initiate the youngest among them into their vile, corrupt brotherhood.