Alejandro Zambra

Megan McDowell

The writer son of a quiet sympathizer with the Pinochet regime reflects on the progress of his novel, in which an unnamed boy from a Chilean suburb witnesses an earthquake and meets an older girl who asks him to spy on her uncle during an overnight camp-out. By the award-winning author of Bonsai.

A Novel

Ways of Going Home

A young boy plays hide and seek in the suburbs of Santiago, unaware that his neighbours are becoming entangled in the brutality of Pinochet's regime. Then one night a mysterious girl appears in his neighbourhood and makes a life-changing request.

Konrad Glogowski

Trevor Berrett

Ways of Going Home tells two stories in four fleeting chapters. The first begins with an earthquake in 1984. The protagonist, unnamed, is nine years old (as was Zambra at that time). Augusto Pinochet had been in power for over ten years, since the coup d'état on September 11, 1973, and he would continue to be the dictator for six more.

Much of Roberto Bolaño's fiction deals with Pinochet's time in power; indeed, Bolaño had personal confrontation with the regime: after the coup he was arrested on suspicion of being a terrorist and was in custody for eight days, only to be rescued by prison guards who happened to be former classmates (see his story "Dance Card" for a fictional account). It should be noted that doubts have arisen as to whether this ever happened at all; nevertheless, Bolaño's fiction gets up close and personal with the Pinochet regime. In contrast, the characters in Ways of Going Home, though living directly under the thumb of Pinochet, don't have any of those kinds of encounters. This novel is, in part, a rumination on those children who were relatively well off, who grew up hearing stories of kidnappings and torture but who never knew anyone who suffered in such a way. It's about one of those children growing up and becoming a writer, and wondering just what he has to write about.

For my complete review, please visit my blog, The Mookse and the Gripes.

A heartbreaking novel from a rising star of Latin America literature, and one of Granta's Best of Young Spanish Language Novelists. Growing up in 1980s Chile, a young boy plays hide and seek in the suburbs of Santiago with his friends while the adults become slowly entangled in the violence of Pinochet's regime - accomplices and victims of the brutal dictatorship. As the country shudders under authoritarian rule, the boy creates stories of his own to explain the sporadic scenes of violence, the disappearances, and the deafening silence of his mother and father. Until, on the night of the Santiago earthquake, a mysterious girl named Claudia appears among the children and the boy's world is changed forever. Now, as a young man reflecting on the tragedies of his childhood, he must find the courage to confront as an adult what he could not have known as a child, and to untangle Chile's troubled past. As he struggles to begin a novel which will encompass the clash between innocence and complicity, the boundaries between fiction and reality blur, and the beautiful Claudia comes back into his life. Ways of Going Home is a heartrending novel from a rising star of Latin America literature. It is the tragic story of the collateral damage caused by the Pinochet regime, and the burden borne by the new generation as they come to terms with their fragile history.

Gary Homewood

Poetic meta fiction about a Chilean childhood, earthquakes, recent political history and family.

Kutalp (Kutalp)

Growing up in 1980s Chile, a young boy plays hide and seek in the suburbs of Santiago with his friends while the adults become slowly entangled in the violence of Pinochet's regime: accomplices and victims of the brutal dictatorship.

Ways of Going Home A Novel

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