Space Invaders

‘A small jewel of a book . . . Fernández’s picturesque language and dream-like atmosphere is well worth being invaded by. A book to slip in the pocket to read and reread.’ Patti Smith

Preoccupied by uneasy memories and visions, a group of friends look back on their childhood. Their thoughts and dreams circle one old classmate: Estrella González Jepsen, who one day simply disappeared. Estrella’s father, it transpires, was a ranking government officer implicated in the Pinochet regime. The question of what became of Estrella haunts her former friends. They catch glimpses of her braids, hear echoes of her voice, read old letters. They recall regimented school assemblies, nationalistic class performances and a trip to the beach. Growing up, they were old enough to sense the danger and tension that surrounded them but powerless to resist or confront it. They could control only the stories they told one another and the ghostly green bullets they fired in their favourite video game.

Nona Fernández effortlessly builds a choral and constantly shifting image of young life in the waning years of the dictatorship. Prose of astonishing beauty is intricately layered to hypnotic, mesmerising effect, as Fernández summons the collective memory of a generation, rescuing felt truth from the oblivion of official history.