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Farrar, Straus and Giroux
January 2013
On Sale: January 8, 2013
160 pages
ISBN: 0374286647
EAN: 9780374286644
Kindle: B008PBYUNO
Hardcover / e-Book
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Fiction Family Life
Alejandro Zambraβs Ways of Going Home begins with an earthquake, seen through the eyes of an unnamed nine-year-old boy who lives in an undistinguished middleclass 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 RaΓΊl. 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 sympathizedβto what degree, the author isnβt sureβwith the Pinochet regime. His reflections on the progress of the novel and on his own lifeβwhich is strikingly similar to the life of his novelβs protagonistβexpose 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 lateβthe 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 BolaΓ±o.
 Media BuzzMorning Edition - June 4, 2013
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