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    Space Invaders: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Space Invaders: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Space Invaders: A Novel
    Ebook60 pages43 minutes

    Space Invaders: A Novel

    By Nona Fernandez

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    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.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateNov 5, 2019
    ISBN9781644451069
    Unavailable
    Space Invaders: A Novel
    Author

    Nona Fernandez

    Nona Fernández nació en Santiago de Chile en 1971. Es actriz, guionista y escritora. Estudió en la Escuela de Teatro de la Universidad Católica de Chile. Ha publicado el volumen de cuentos El Cielo (2000), las novelas Mapocho (2002, 2019 edición definitiva), Av. 10 de Julio Huamachuco (2007), ambas ganadoras del Premio Municipal de Literatura de Santiago, Fuenzalida (2012), Space Invaders (2013), Chilean Electric (2015), ganadora del premio Mejores obras publicadas del Consejo Nacional del Libro y la Lectura, La dimensión desconocida (2016), distinguida con el Premio Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, que otorga la Feria del Libro de Guadalajara, y el ensayo Voyager (2020). En 2011 fue seleccionada como uno de Los 25 secretos mejor guardados de América Latina en la FIL de Guadalajara. También es autora de las obras de teatro El taller (2012) y Liceo de niñas (2016), ambas estrenadas por su compañía, La Pieza Oscura. Algunos de sus libros han sido traducidos al italiano, el francés, el alemán y el inglés.

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    Reviews for Space Invaders

    4/5

    29 ratings2 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Brilliant, dreamlike... and way too short.
    • 4/5
      A novella, short by definition, but despite this I found this book to be very powerful. I'm always amazed when an author can say so much with so few words. This is not a straightforward story, and it's told in a dreamlike fashion. In fact, dreaming itself is a big part of this novella.A group of school children, children whose school uniforms must always be worn perfectly. Who walk in lines, their hand on the shoulder of the student in front, so as to keep perfect distances from each other. Perfection and order is demanded. This is Chile under Pinochet, and these children are trying to find a way to understand what they see, but can't comprehend. They play space invaders where they capture and watch the invaders in this make believe world. Then a school girl disappears, doesn't return to school. They each remember different things, dream of her and wonder what has happened. As they grow older they understand much more and wish they didn't, because unlike the space invaders world, in the real one they are powerless. The author does a great job with pacing in this story. The tension rises incrementally as one reads and the dreams and fears continue."We are the most important piece in a game, but we still don't know what game it is.""No one is exactly sure when it happened, but we all remember that coffins and funerals and wreaths where suddenly everywhere and there was no escaping them, because it had all become something like a bad dream. Maybe it had always been that way and we were only realizing it."