A brilliant novel from "the herald of a new wave of Chilean fiction"
(Marcela Valdes, The Nation)
Alejandro Zambra's Ways of Going Home begins with an earthquake, seen
through the eyes of an unnamed nine-year-old boy who lives in an
undistinguished middle-class housing development in a suburb of
Santiago, Chile. When the neighbors camp out overnight, the protagonist
gets his first glimpse of Claudia, an older girl who asks him to spy on
her uncle Raúl.
In the second section, the protagonist is the writer of the story begun
in the first section. His father is a man of few words who claims to be
apolitical but who quietly sympathized--to what degree, the author isn't
sure--with the Pinochet regime. His reflections on the progress of the
novel and on his own life--which is strikingly similar to the life of
his novel's protagonist--expose the raw suture of fiction and reality.
Ways of Going Home switches between author and character, past and
present, reflecting with melancholy and rage on the history of a nation
and on a generation born too late--the generation which, as the
author-narrator puts it, learned to read and write while their parents
became accomplices or victims. It is the most personal novel to date
from Zambra, the most important Chilean author since Roberto Bolaño.
