Theatre of War

by Andrea Jeftanovic, Frances Riddle (Translator)

A unique insight into Chilean history and the devastating psychological effects of war, political violence and domestic abuse narrated from the point of view of a nine-year old girl.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Spanish Literature, Novella, Historical, 21st Century, Latin American

162 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2010

About the author

Andrea Jeftanovic is a Chilean writer. Born in Santiago in 1970, she is considered one of the most prominent authors of her country. She is the author of the novels Escenario de Guerra (2000) and Geografía de la lengua (Love in a Foreign Language, 2007), and of two volumes of short stories: No aceptes caramelos de extraños (Don’t Take Candy from Strangers, 2013) and Destinos errantes (2016). Of Jewish and Serbian ancestry, Jeftanovic grew up among three religions – Russian Orthodox, Catholic and Jewish. She studied sociology at the Catholic University in Santiago de Chile and in 2005 she finished a PhD in Latin American Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. Jeftanovic is not afraid of controversy, and sees art as ‘a space for moral experimentation’. She has received several awards, including the Chilean Art Critics Circle Award and the National Book and Reading Council Award. Her work has been translated into several languages and it appears in international as well as Chilean anthologies. Jeftanovic is a regular contributor to Quimera Magazine, Letras Libres, and El Mercurio. Theatre of War is her debut novel and her first book to appear in English.

Reviews

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Theatre of War is Frances Riddle’s translation of Andrea Jeftanovic’s 2000 debut novel Escenario de Guerra, and the latest, and 22nd, book from the specialists in translations of “outstanding contemporary Latin American literature” Charco Press (I’ve read them all) but I think their first from Chile.

The novel is narrated by Tamara, who is nine when the novel opens but in her post-university 20s when it finishes.

Her parents are immigrants to the country, having fled the war in another continent (never I think stated, but seemingly the Balkan conflicts, although not a precise parallel). The trauma from that, particularly the disappearance of his own father, taken away and presumed to have been executed by armed men, continues to traumatise Tamara’s father, and the family dynamics and Tamara’s own upbringing are severely impacted. She also finds out in her teenage years that her two siblings have a different father.

Jeftanovic herself is a daughter of a Serbian father and a mother of Bulgarian-Jewish descent, both of whom left Europe fleeing World War II and she herself was born in 1970, the year Allende took power in Chile, living her formative years under the Pinochet dictatorship after the 1973 coup.

The organising principle of the book is that Tamara is watching a play of her own life, the author herself having a strong interest in the theatre inspired by her friendship with Isidora Aguirre. For example, Act II, entitled “Permanently on Tour”, and which is set after the break-up of the family, begins:

The theatre empties out. My siblings, my companions on tour, act out their own dramas on other stages. Before I can put on a play with new characters, I wait for my next audience. The script is still being written. The plot, the characters and the stage directions remain unknown. I continue rehearsing my lines. I am deformed, mute, blind until the damaged parts come into view. My parents lean their backs against the wall, each immersed in a monologue as they wait for the end of the century.

The writing is visceral, somewhat reminiscent from Charco’s stable, of Ariana Harwicz, or more broadly Elfriede Jelinek. Jeftanovic has acknowledged the commonalities between her writing and that of Jelinek, Clarice Lispector, Diamela Eltit and Ana Arzoumanian, although has also pointed out that she only read Jelinek and Arzoumanian after this novel was published.

A powerful piece of writing, if at times one where I failed to completely connect (more a case of me than the book). 3.5 stars- rounded to 3 for my personal experience although one I would recommend to others.

A review that does the book more justice: https://bookblast.com/blog/guest-revi...

[Neil · Rating 3 out of 5]

Theatre of War is narrated by Tamara who tells us her story in a series of short scenes organised into three acts. As the title of the book suggests, the underlying premise of the narrative is that of Tamara watching/taking part in a play based on her life. There are multiple sections that involve stage directions or comments on learning lines etc.. Within that, we watch as Tamara grows from a young girl to a woman (from 9 to early/mid-twenties). We see her relationship with her father (struggling with post-traumatic stress after an unspecified conflict (the blurb places it in the Balkans)), her mother, a man called Franz and with her siblings who, she discovers early on in the book, have a different father.

So, this is the story of a woman heavily impacted by both her own history and that of her parents. The format of the book is effective in the way that it mirrors the kind of way we remember our lives: we don’t remember a continuous experience, but rather the significant episodes, the things that have shaped us. For Tamara, there’s a lot of trauma in her and her parents’ past, there’s turbulence in her childhood (both emotional and in terms of her family’s constant movement and periods of separation).

Whilst I think the idea of short, sharp scenes, almost snapshots, is a good way to reflect how we remember our lives, it does make for a rather disjointed reading experience. This is especially true when the brevity of the sections seems to be in contradiction to the weight of the sentences. For my taste, I found a lot of the writing to be too much. For others, I know, the writing will be expressive and immersive, but my reaction was that it felt like it was trying too hard and the poetic sentences seemed to fight against the rapid switching from scene to scene.

This though is just my personal reaction and although it prevented me from being able to properly engage with the book, I can see a good argument that this is a case of “it’s not you, it’s me” and that others will respond well to the language and get a lot more out of the story.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Charco Press is an Edinburgh-based small UK press – they focus on “finding outstanding contemporary Latin American literature and bringing it to new readers in the English-speaking world”.

This is the last book of their fourth year of publication – their first by a Chilean author, the 2000 debut of Andrea Jeftanovic.

It is translated by Frances Riddle who (among many other books) translated for Charco Gabriela Camezon Camara’s “Slum Virgin” and Carlos Maliandi’s “The German Room”.

The author’s background is important to this novel, she has written:

I also feel anger and guilt because I am a survivor. What would have happened if I had been my father’s mother in Eastern Europe during the upheaval of the 1940s? What if I had been eighteen in Chile, and not three, during the military coup in 1973?

And she has said of her writing

I have been interested in working on violence in memory, in the individual and collective stories. I wish to take this violence to an aesthetic proposition, to a “form” that contains that destructive force demolishing characters and plots, signs and signifiers, and even searches amidst the chaos for images bearing beauty ………. As I said, violence is the motive that crosses through arguments and explodes the language in my texts. This proposal makes me think that writing is an urgency, an oddly slow urgency. The urge takes its time, flows, decants in characters, and chapters, with the risk of losing its meaning. And violence breaks loose on its classical support: The body. I am interested in looking at the body as the place where biography and national history intersect, as in the body as a place for quotations, vital and biographical, the body as a container of memories. I write to turn over the page. My time is vertical. It is strung together by the mark in a book that each day rests on a new page, a new volume. In memory, things happen for a second time, in reading, for a third, in writing, forever. I confess that I write with the naïve hope of correcting history, my history and that of my time.

She explains this book much better than I can

As a consequence of the aforementioned interests, in the year 2000 I published a novel titled ”Escenario de Guerra”, which describes the devastating psychological effects that a war, a nameless war, has on a family, through the eyes of Tamara, a nine-year-old girl. I tried to rehearse a child’s point of view, freer from ideological apprehensions, so that this main character could see what was happening around her in a freer and more playful manner. To do so, I resorted to the game of drama, which transformed her life into a staging. The main characters are a father who sinks in the newspapers to forget the war, and the mother, a sick woman who suffers temporary amnesia. All of this starts from the thesis that “memory is like representing a play on stage, where things happen one, two, three times.” It is a text that elaborates the traumatic memory of postwar immigrant families: how they redesign their existence, the life strategies they have as of their damaged memories. Speaking of war not as a verbal discourse but through the body, we can understand what happens to the limbs, how we somatize that trauma. And the theater itself was a resource where this pain, this way of living in spite of that past, could be staged.Tamara, the narrator and main character, registers with her cyclops eye the strategies for survival of an inherited world marked by precariousness, indescribable traumas, and circular voyages

Overall I found the book uneven – at times very powerful, at others less effective.

It consists of a set of vignettes (scenes) from the author’s life, as she experiences, remembers or (in effect) stages them, each written in a rather breathless present tense which contrasts (sometimes successfully, sometimes less so) to the weight of meaning with which many of the sentences are imbued.

The central conceit tends I think to worse best when it is explicit (for example the opening chapter of Act 2) but at times the story seems to drift from it.

Some of the imagery and memories are extremely strong. The way in which the daughter’s menarche triggers (pun intended) her father’s aversion to blood – will stay with me for some time. Others seem less convincing though. The book is full of deliberately jarring metaphorical juxtapositions - but many to me did not stand up to examination (it is hard to know if this is a difficulty of translation). And some of the deeper sentences/aphorisms seem to suffer from the same phenomenon one of my Goodreads friends has aimed at the writing of Rachel Cusk (and more recently Brandon Taylor) – that you can rearrange the nouns and verbs and the sentences makes equal sense.

Nevertheless an interesting debut.

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Structurally ambitious and beautifully written Chilean novel about the psychological and emotional impacts of war on a family over several generations. Organized as if our narrator is remembering her life events as if they are scenes from a play, this book explores the way memory often comes to us out of context and in non-chronological order. With its frank depiction of how grief and loss can tear a family apart, this book is not an easy read but it is very rewarding.

[Vishy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I discovered Andrea Jeftanovic's 'Theatre of War' recently and decided to read it today.

When the story starts, the narrator Tamara describes a play which is being staged in which she is one of the performers. Soon we realize that the play might be the story of her life, as the narrator describes her childhood, her life with her siblings and her parents, how her dad moved from his war-torn country to a new one, but still has nightmares about it, how her mom is nearly always unhappy, how her brother and sister look different compared to her and the secret behind that. The story starts with this and continues as it charts Tamara's life as she grows up, goes to college, falls in love and has interesting and challenging life experiences.The story starts with a war and it ends with a war and its aftermath. In between, it is the story of a family which navigates these troubled waters called life.

The descriptions in the book on how Tamara's family goes through hard times because of financial circumstances is very moving. Reading about how they frequently get evicted from their house because they couldn't pay the bills and how their personal possessions are all auctioned off (once the TV is plugged off and taken away while they are watching a programme) before they are evicted is heartbreaking to read. Being poor and being an immigrant is always hard and the book depicts that movingly. How Tamara's dad continues to be a nine year old boy who has nightmares of war and how Tamara's mom loves her family but hates responsibility and yearns to be a free spirit is beautifully depicted in the book.

Andrea Jeftanovic's prose is beautiful and a pleasure to read. In some places she decides to be playful and toys with the reader. I remember reading one passage at the end of which I felt something strange – there was a dissonance there and it didn't make sense overall. I felt the passage was hiding a secret and it refused to reveal it to me, because I wasn't giving it the attention and love it deserved. I decided to read it again more slowly pausing after every sentence and taking it in, and this time, the passage opened its heart and spoke to me and revealed its secret to me. Every sentence in the passage changed the point of view – the first sentence was about Tamara and the second sentence was about her dad and it continued like this. When I discovered this, the whole passage glowed with its beauty and music. In music, there is a form called contrapuntal, in which two are more independent melodic parts are connected together by a common harmony. This passage was like that. It was brilliant and beautiful.

When we reach the end of the book, an interesting question arises. Is the whole book the narrator Tamara's story? Or is the book just the story told in the play in which Tamara plays one of the parts? Or is it both? It is a fascinating thought to ponder on. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this if you get to read this book.

I loved 'Theatre of War'. Andrea Jeftanovic is clearly a talented writer and this is a brilliant debut. This book was first published around twenty years back (so it has been around for a while), though it has been translated into English only recently (it was originally written in Spanish. Andrea Jeftanovic is from Chile.) She has published more books since then – I spotted atleast one more novel, three collections of short stories and one collection of essays. I hope they get translated into English soon.

I'll leave you with one of my favourite passages from the book.

"Mum prepares breakfast for two kids every morning. She kisses Adela and Davor on the forehead as they leave the house. She makes two beds, fills the tub two times. She hugs one child with each arm. From the balcony her eyes follow two shapes as they walk away. She holds out one hand to cross the street, then the other. I’m left at the end of the line, clutching at my sister. She whispers a little secret to the right, another to the left. Her two legs guide two paths. Two tears roll down her face as she watches her children sleeping. She doesn’t know the little girl who lies beside her and follows her around the house, snatching at her dress and repeating her name. She is incapable of including me in her twofold affection.
I don’t want to hear her ask again : Who’s that girl lying there naked with her hair all tangled? Mum never reaches my centre, just brushes around my edges, grazes my surface. I spread out before her like an incomprehensible atlas. A pair of steaming bowls are waiting for us when we get home from school. My brother and sister don’t say anything, just silently serve a third portion on the bread plate. I have lunch at the corner of the table. And for a moment I want to drive it into my abdomen.
Another day my sister and brother and I all come home together and I stop to tie my shoes. As I reach the door, mere steps behind them, it slams in my face and I’m locked outside. I watch Mum, her welcoming smile, her wrist turning the key in the lock. Her world is a perfect triangle, not an awkward square. I’m the edge that doesn’t fit into that geometric shape. For Mum I’m nothing more than an empty space in her brain, a black hole that swallows up all memory of me."

Have you read Andrea Jeftanovic's 'Theatre of War'? What do you think about it?

[Liv · Rating 5 out of 5]

Theatre of War was the debut novel from Chilean author Andrea Jeftanovic and the first of her works to be translated into English. Theatre of War is a clever insight into the struggles of one family through poverty, illness, trauma, struggles with the past and the difficulties of memory and more through the eyes of young Tamara.

The novel is also exceedingly clever in structure as it splits between acts to mirror a play and whilst the writing is that of a more traditional novel. The descriptions focus on imagery, on the sounds and the environment to almost construct strong visuals, as if its a play, for the reader.

This at times means there are rather graphic descriptions as Tamara discusses her body bleeding and talks about her ten fingers covered in blood, her body leaking, her attempts to keep the blood inside. However this makes Theatre of War so haunting and compelling.

The book has strong themes that examine memory and how the mind distorts events, alongside trauma, loss, and poverty. Focused on a family who have fled to South America following the trauma of the Balklans war, Theatre of War feels much more abstract in how it handles the themes and concepts as it never explicitly references the specific war.

I absolutely devoured this book and found the whole thing an incredibly immersive read, and I think fans of more abstract books like Han Kang's The Vegetarian will greatly appreciate this one too. Definitely a new favourite of the year, thank you to the publishers for a gifted copy.

[Andy Weston · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jeftanovic tells her story as the protagonist, Tamara, looks back at her childhood sat in a theatre, as a series of scenes in a play. It’s a traumatic past, and begins when she is 9 years old, in Chile, her family having fled from the Balkan war.
The most striking parts of the story are in the first few chapters, as due to her father’s PTSD and her mother’s affairs, the family is steadily torn apart, both haunted by images from the war.
It’s a short book, and an important one in understanding the term of ‘refugees’ in the world today; one minute a family with good jobs and private school for the children, yet whose neighbours ‘pray differently’ than they do, the next minute are torn apart and forced into exile.
I know and hold great affection for both areas. I lived in Chile for 5 years, and I have since travelled to the rural mountain villages of the Balkans to try to understand how war came to them, and failed to.
It’s another round of applause for Charco Press, from Edinburgh, a debut novel, and a wonderful translation from Frances Riddle...

a gnash of fire on the horizon

there are lagoons of silence

Dad cloaked by the newspaper

[Kamila Kunda · Rating 4 out of 5]

“I’m the same age as Dad. He’s stuck at age nine, which was how old he was when the war began. I don’t want to get any older either. I want to stay with him in his nine-year-old sadness”, says Tamara, the protagonist of Andrea Jeftanovic’s “Theatre of War”. Tamara’s father suffers from severe PTSD, and, despite having a family, mentally lives on another continent, years ago when the Yugoslav Wars were wreaking havoc upon the Balkans. Tamara’s mother “is riddled with unexplained illnesses” and due to a love affair leaves the family, taking her three children with her, after which she develops an unnamed mental illness. Instability, emotional neglect, deprivation are common features of the girl’s childhood.

Jeftanovic, in a gorgeously poetic and sometimes oneiric prose, wove a story of memories, impressions, sensory illusions, dreams and mental disorders, and indirectly showed the effects of the war not only on an individual but also future generations. Intergenerational trauma resulting in PTSD, emotional detachment to others but also to oneself, inability to connect with the world and the constant need to flee become bread and butter for Tamara. She attracts a wrong man, “with a hole in his heart”, and cannot heal him. Hurt people hurt people.

At the same time “Theatre of War” can be read as a lyrical, fictional memoir of a refugee family, trying to build a life in Chile but unable to grow roots. “At home we pray to another God, we celebrate other holidays, we speak in a language both familiar and incomprehensible to me”.

In some chapters Jeftanovic puts her characters on stage, and in a way asks them to act and say the dialogues from the script, which may resemble parts of the Schema therapy; this is a fascinating literary technique as well as a depiction of a healing process for Tamara and people close to her. “Theatre of War” is a spellbinding novel, at once bringing us closer to the reality and the aftermath of war, and trying to protect us from it.

[Cardenio · Rating 3 out of 5]

Destaco la prosa de Jeftanovic, por sobre todo. De cuando en cuando se tira frases como "A medida que leo me voy tapando la boca para que no se me escape el horror de los labios" o "Mamá grita mucho, y cuando grita no es mamá", que, en definitiva, son las que crean las atmósferas de tensión a lo largo del relato.

Me gusta ese juego que hace la autora al establecer un paralelo entre la memoria y la performatividad del teatro. Me gusta que la historia se desarticule hasta el final, pero me temo que esa idea se quede en la superficie.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite a claustrophobic read but an excellent evocation of the life of a second generation Chilean immigrant growing up with her very damaged parents who have fled war in what seems to be the Balkans (although it could be anywhere). The family dynamics (never wholly explained) are complicated and the effects on the children are incredibly sad as we watch the parents and their marriage unravel. Really not an easy read but one that tells a relatively neglected story very well.

[Claire (Silver Linings and Pages) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Theatre of War is a clever debut novel by Chilean author Jeftanovic, which explores the trauma caused by the Balkan conflict on a family that have fled to South America to rebuild their lives. The story is from the perspective of young Tamara, trying to process all the psychological damage which is destroying the family. Her memories are masterfully constructed as if the characters are members of a theatre production, and depersonalisation seems to help her sift through the trauma.

Thank you to Charcopress for this review copy in exchange for an honest opinion.

[Felipe Beirigo · Rating 5 out of 5]

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOKO DEMAIS. CRIANÇA DESGRAÇADA JÁ SACOU A MISERIA DA VIDA, OS PAIS SÃO RUÍNA, GUERRA, DITADURA ZUADA, PEDREIRO GALÃ, TRAIÇÃO, MORTE, CAVALOS. ANNIE ERNAUX FICOU PARECENDO TURMA DA MÔNICA. CHORA TODO MUNDO.

[Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

So I had to do a double take today when I read up her profile and it turns out that she is in fact NOT a poet. This was unexpected for me because her writing (or maybe the translation?) is just dripping with poetic imagery. For a while there, I was convinced that she might have been part of a strange sister-with-different-mothers thing with Ocean Vuong. But somehow, despite almost the total proliferation of Latina poetas-autoras, Andrea isn't one of them.

So it's pretty clear now how I view her writing - like a Chilean Ocean Vuong (or maybe it's more apt to say that Ocean Vuong is like a Viet Andrea Jeftanovic). They also have a lot of similarities: both grew up with extremely war traumatized parents, experienced their own traumas as 1.5 generation immigrants to a foreign land, have the gift of poetic voices, and write fictionalized memoires of their own experiences (the genre of almost autobiography which I really enjoy).

That said, I'm not used to reading poetry, so a lot of the beautiful language and the poetic writing just bonks right off of my sense noggin. I enjoy most of what I read, but some of it did feel like quicksand where I couldn't find a way to free myself from the words on the page no matter how hard I try. Still, this book definitely made me feel raw after reading it, and I definitely enjoyed the experience even if it isn't my usual cup of tea.

(Finished on my last day in Santiago, having metroed over to the terminal de bus on my way down to the Patagonias)

[Ayu Ratna Angela · Rating 5 out of 5]

"When I turn my head, the faces of the lost children multiply. The vacant eyes of the women. The hunched backs of the men. I clench my fists. They make the pilgrimage through this atomic landscape with their heads bowed. There are hundreds, thousands of then, shuffling between the rails. And my fists are clenched. The shadows of the boxcars slither across the ground. I see them move away, their arms stretching from the narrow windows, gesturing wildly. I bound over the sleepers with my fists clenched. I watch until the darkness of a tunnel finally swallows the shapes. I run and run after the train, but it's stop halfway, facing the wrong direction. "

Theatre of war bercerita tentang efek psikologis jangka panjang dari perang di Balkans atas kehidupan sebuah keluarga yang akhirnya bermigrasi ke Amerika Selatan. Kisahnya diceritakan dari sudut pandang seorang gadis kecil bernama Tamara. Seperti judulnya, buku ini diceritakan dalam kilasan-kilasan pendek ingatan Tamara, sejak ia kecil sampai dewasa.

Buku ini sedikit mengingatkan saya akan novel A Girl Returned, dengan kekelaman dan kemurungan yang sama. Membaca buku ini bagi saya cukup bikin depresi, terutama setengah buku pertama, namun karena kisahnya disampaikan dengan menarik dengan bahasa yang mengalir saya jadi bisa menikmatinya dan tidak membutuhkan waktu lama untuk selesai membacanya.

Yang masih menjadi pertanyaan saya sampai akhir adalah sebenarnya di negara mana asal keluarga Tamara?

[Sylvia · Rating 5 out of 5]

El escenario de esta guerra es una y muchas casas, los actores principales: padre, madre, hijas, hijo. Este es el bombardeo que la memoria genera por sí misma y todo lo detona. Es en estas páginas donde el enemigo a vencer es tanto lo cotidiano como lo heredado. Descubro aquí s una narradora feroz y de disparo infalible.

[Alex G · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is not for everyone, but it’s the best one i’ve ever read. gut wrenching.

[Charlotte · Rating 5 out of 5]

- I like the structure, short sharp chapters that make an interesting theme easily readable and quite the page turner.
- I have enjoyed novels that cover war related PTSD in the past (such as At Night All Blood Is Black), so Theatre of War is playing into my interests. Throw in some episodic flashbacks to Act Zero and I will more than likely be sold on this novel.
- I'm finding this moving, Tamara's story resonates with mine in some ways and doesn't in others but I find myself empathising with her strongly and welling up in parts.
- this is a really interesting novel and I wonder what awards it has, and will, win.
- this is predominantly a coming of age narrative and it noticeably follows the hero's journey 3-act structure (it is even structured into the 3 demarcated acts).
- this is expertly crafted on the sentence level. Every sentence could be unpacked and analysed: it is full of meaning and beauty. Moments in the writing that blow me away, moments where I whisper 'wow'.
- this is a story about the Balkans but in reality the author leaves the details vague enough that it could be about any conflict, any man trapped in the past, suffering from PTSD, from a war and a homeland he fled from as a child. It could be about any parents with huge personal, emotional and mental issues, it could be about any child coming of age in a broken household and navigating where they fit, who loves them and who they are.
- having finished this book, it was nothing short of spectacular. At its heart, this a book about a daughter's love for her father, I am deeply moved.
- three words: devastating, beautiful, masterpiece.

3/3 points for concept
3/3 points for writing
3/3 points for enjoyment
1/1 point for feeling/moved
= 10/10 (5/5*)

[Sandra Harris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Esceneario de Guerra is a first-person POV of Tamara’s life from childhood to middle adulthood. It is a fractured and elusive story that unfolds as the staging of a play and dissects her parents' trauma and its effect on Tamara and her two siblings. Act I is childhood; Act II is the YA years, and Act III, the present (early to mid-’30s).

I enjoyed elements of the book but didn’t love it as a whole. The writing is fantastic; it has that quiet, straightforward quality I gravitate toward. I underlined many passages but wished the author had followed up those sections with just one or two more sentences to advance the themes further. Still, I can see myself returning to peruse the passages I marked.

The concept of mounting a play is interesting in that it simultaneously engages with and keeps the reader at bay. Because of the first person POV, there is a false sense of intimacy. The reader is privy to backstage details an audience is not, creating the illusion that we are closer to Tamara than some of the characters are to her. But as much as we strive to understand her, she remains guarded. This is most definitely a book about trauma and isolation, but it is a very clinical narration.

[Ju Pavão · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Pego o álbum de fotos da família, avanço pelas páginas à medida que minha figura rouba espaço do fundo. Enquanto escrevo, fico imersa nesse exercício, fascinada pelo horror e pela tristeza que recrio. Minhas palavras são um grito na folha. À medida que escrevo a respeito da minha vida, deixo de fazer parte dela; vou criando outra existência nas estrelinhas."

Tamara tem 9 anos e vive no Chile sob ditadura militar. Sua família desestruturada vive em privação, movimento e luto. Ela vai criando, como numa peça de teatro, uma vida possível apesar de toda a memória, todos os traumas - nascidos em si ou herdados dos pais. Ao forjar uma identidade própria, questiona se é mesmo possível desvencilhar-se das dores do passado, principalmente daqueles que vieram antes de nós.

Lindíssimo ♡

[Kei Furuya · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 rounded up.

Theatre of War was a spontaneous purchase after I read the premise and it was a very pleasant surprise.

Chilean author Andrea Jeftanovic's debut novel translated beautifully by Frances Riddles, tells a story through the eyes of Tamara, who we meet initially as a girl but follows her into early adulthood. She is haunted by scars of her past; her father's PTSD of war, her mother's relationship with her and her half siblings, the life as an immigrant... but also the story is told in a very interesting way. She frames her memories in a theatre setting, she directs her characters, stage direction, learning lines. It gives the story another dimension and lingers on the question of what trauma can do to memory.

[Charlotte · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got this as a blind date with a book from one of my local indie shops, and as a fan of Fiction in Translation I wanted to try something new.

Overall the pacing and storytelling was unique and I enjoyed how the plot eventually culminated at the end. My main criticism is it took a while for the backstory to become known and honestly if I had not read the blurb I would have missed a lot of the context behind the book and what it was about.

The characters were unique and I enjoyed the development of the lead character. It's definitely worth looking into if your wanting a Fiction in Translation read that is a bit different.

[WndyJW · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well written novel of a family who fled to South America to escape the Balkan conflict. The youngest daughter, now an adult, directs a play in which her memories of the disintegration of her family, her parent and older half-siblings who are haunted by the violence of the Balkan war, are acted out over and over while she tries to make sense of her pain.

Highly recommended.

[Scarleth Méndez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Es desgarrador, pero también precioso. La única razón de porque no le pongo cinco estrellas es porque me hubiese gustado conocer más del contexto. En ningún momento se aclara bien de qué guerra se habla, supongo que para poner sobre la mesa el argumento de cómo la violencia se encuentra en diferentes lugares y contextos.

[Orlando Cerrutti · Rating 4 out of 5]

Complejo, pero así es la vida

Una historia sobre la guerra, el hambre, la separación, la migración que no disuelve los traumas, la disfuncionalidad familiar, el narcisismo materno, la falta de identidad, la muerte.
En fin, todo lo complejo y difícil de vivir!

[Pilar Bu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Queria simplesmente pegar a Tamara no colo e levar pra longe. Quantos atravessamentos. Quanta coisa importante sendo discutida num livro só. Existe um projeto que se vê aqui, como em space invaders e kramp, que é mostrar a ditadura pelos olhos de crianças. Acho isso poderoso

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Riveting, haunting, enduring.

[Andrea Amosson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un libro diferente y sorprendente. La prosa es fenomenal y el desarrollo de la protagonista es notable. ¡Muy recomendable!

[Phil · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought this waqs an excellent way. I really liked Jeftanovic's style of prose and very good transflation from Frances Riddle. overall, a really good read.

[Sandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

'In Dad's country the corpses pile up to the sky. Dad watches another war on TV. He's nine years old again, despite his six centuries. The lines on his face tense with each falling bomb.'

[Em · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars, normal people by sally rooney meets balkan war trauma.

its not an enjoyable book and i don't think it's meant to be. i would recommend it