National Book Award for Translated Literature
Space Invaders
Space Invaders is a brief novel that follows the shadow of a vanished classmate, Estrella, through the memories and dreams of children who grew up under Pinochet’s dictatorship in Chile. Fragmented images from the game become a metaphor for state violence and forgetting.
Work Information
Memories of children’s play later illuminate the terror of dictatorship.
As adults, former classmates remember a girl who disappeared through letters, voices, games, and school ceremonies. Private loss leads to traces of violence that official history tries to erase.
Review Summaries
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The novel is valued for the unease compressed into its brevity and for its dreamlike structure. Its fragmentary narration, which refuses quick explanation, leaves a strong sense of uncertain memory and political fear.
Book Information
- Publisher
- Graywolf Press
- Published
- 2019-11-05
- Pages
- 96 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 16.08 x 0.69 x 20.09 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9781644450079
- ISBN-10
- 1644450070
- Price
- 3408 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Literature & Fiction/Genre Fiction/Historical
Longlisted for the National Book Award for Translated Literature A dreamlike evocation of a generation that grew up in the shadow of a dictatorship in 1980s Chile Space Invaders is the story of a group of childhood friends who, in adulthood, are preoccupied by uneasy memories and visions of their classmate Estrella González Jepsen. In their dreams, they catch glimpses of Estrella's braids, hear echoes of her voice, and read old letters that eventually, mysteriously, stopped arriving. They recall regimented school assemblies, nationalistic class performances, and a trip to the beach. Soon it becomes clear that Estrella's father was a ranking government officer implicated in the violent crimes of the Pinochet regime, and the question of what became of her after she left school haunts her erstwhile friends. Growing up, these friends--from her pen pal, Maldonado, to her crush, Riquelme--were old enough to sense the danger and tension that surrounded them, but were powerless in the face of it. They could control only the stories they told one another and the "ghostly green bullets" they fired in the video game they played obsessively. One of the leading Latin American writers of her generation, Nona Fernández effortlessly builds a choral and constantly shifting image of young life in the waning years of the dictatorship. In her short but intricately layered novel, she summons the collective memory of a generation, rescuing felt truth from the oblivion of official history.
Natasha Wimmer is a translator who has worked on Roberto Bolaño's 2666 , for which she was awarded the PEN Translation prize in 2009, and The Savage Detectives . She lives in New York.
Reviews
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This is amazing writing. What’s not there looms larger than what is.
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Estoy estudiando inglés y es una historia adecuada para mi nivel
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Viene en inglés y yo lo quiero en español
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🎮 Childhood as something replayed, half-understood, and unsettling. Totally confused me, but memorable.