Nona Fernandez - Voyager: Constellations Of Memory

Nona Fernandez - Voyager: Constellations Of Memory  

5 ⭐

Genre: Memoir, Non-Fiction, Latin American Literature, Translated Literature 

Translated by: Natasha Wimmer  

Original Title: Mapa de Las Lenguas 

Original Language: Spanish 

Pages: 126

Format: Paperback 

Publisher: Daunt Books Publishing 

Date Published: 21st February 2023

Huge Thank You to Daunt Books Publishing for a copy. 

Book Blurb: 

A startling book-length essay, at once grand and intimate, from National Book Award finalist Nona Fernández.

Voyager begins with Nona Fernández accompanying her elderly mother to the doctor to seek an explanation for her frequent falls and inability to remember what preceded them. As the author stares at the image of her mother’s brain scan, it occurs to her that the electrical signals shown on the screen resemble the night sky.

Inspired by the mission of the Voyager spacecrafts, Fernández begins a process of observation and documentation. She describes a recent trip to the remote Atacama desert—one of the world’s best spots for astronomical observation—to join people who, like her, hope to dispel the mythologized history of Chile’s new democracy. Weaving together the story of her mother’s illness with story of her country and of the cosmos itself, Fernández braids astronomy and astrology, neuroscience and memory, family history and national history into this brief but intensely imagined autobiographical essay. Scrutinizing the mechanisms of personal, civic, and stellar memory, she insists on preserving the truth of what we’ve seen and experienced and finding ways to recover what people and countries often prefer to forget.

In Voyager, Fernández finds a new container for her profound and surreal reckonings with the past. One of the great chroniclers of our day, she has written a rich and resonant book.

My Review: 

This book is something else! So beautiful and lyrical! Honestly, I wish I could give it the whole constellation of stars and not just a mere 5 stars. The writing is just superb and hits just the right heartstrings at the right times. I even cried reading this...that’s how impactful and beautiful Fernandez's words are!

Memoir in a book-length essay about constellations in the sky, the cosmos, the meaning of life, memories and much more. Fernandez also touches on her mother’s illness, mythologised history of Chile’s new democracy, the importance to remember the past and people who are lost but not completely gone from our memories and from the stars.

I loved how Fernandez managed to link all of the topics that don’t seem to fit with each other, so perfectly together, as well as making the reader think outside the box. I adore her lyrical writing and making this memoir flow through the galaxy-like spacecraft that is step-by-step opening of all the secrets about our humans and Earth's beginnings. This book definitely made me think a lot about myself, my own perceptions and my own memories. Honestly, it just makes you think deeply about everything, as well as question your own mind.

Overall: It is so hard to put into words how amazing this book is and how touching it is to read those lyrical and beautifully crafted words. Honestly, you need to pick this book up yourself to explore its true brilliance. Loved it so much!

About the Author: 

Nona Fernández was born in Santiago, Chile. She is an actress and writer and has published two plays, a collection of short stories, and six novels, including Space Invaders and The Twilight Zone, which was awarded the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize. Space Invaders was also longlisted for the 2019 National Book Awards for Translated Literature. The Twilight Zone was a finalist for the 2021 National Book Award for Translated Literature. 

https://dauntbookspublishing.co.uk/authors/nona-fernandez

Nona Fernandez - The Twilight Zone

Nona Fernandez - The Twilight Zone    

5 ⭐

Genre: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Translated Fiction, Latin American Literature

Translated by: Natasha Wimmer 

Original Title: La Dimension Desconocida

Original Language: Spanish 

Pages: 232

Format: Paperback Proof 

Publisher: Daunt Books Publishing 

Date Published: 7th July 2022 

Huge Thank You to Daunt Books Publishing for a proof copy. 

Book Blurb: 

It is 1984 in Chile, in the middle of the Pinochet dictatorship. A member of the secret police walks into the office of a dissident magazine and finds a reporter, who records his testimony. The narrator of Nona Fernández’s mesmerizing and terrifying novel The Twilight Zone is a child when she first sees this man’s face on the magazine’s cover with the words “I Tortured People.” His complicity in the worst crimes of the regime and his commitment to speaking about them haunt the narrator into her adulthood and career as a writer and documentarian. Like a secret service agent from the future, through extraordinary feats of the imagination, Fernández follows the “man who tortured people” to places that archives can’t reach, into the sinister twilight zone of history where morning routines, a game of chess, Yuri Gagarin, and the eponymous TV show of the novel’s title coexist with the brutal yet commonplace machinations of the regime.

How do crimes vanish in plain sight? How does one resist a repressive regime? And who gets to shape the truths we live by and take for granted? The Twilight Zone pulls us into the dark portals of the past, reminding us that the work of the writer in the face of historical erasure is to imagine so deeply that these absences can be, for a time, spectacularly illuminated.

My Review: 

This book is set in Chile during the Pinochet regime. In this book, a military officer comes to a local magazine editor and confesses torturing and killing people. His confession goes live and the military officer disappears. For the narrator of the book, this magazine article is all she remembers, even though more than 25 years after the article has been released have now passed. The narrator encounters the military officer once again, whilst working on a documentary about Pinochet’s regime about 25 years after it all happened. She wants to meet the man she calls a torturer. She wants to know why he did what he did and why he confessed all these years ago. She talks through his famous victims and their stories, one by one, comparing them with some of the episodes of the Twilight Zone TV show.

I loved how beautifully written this book was and how perfectly different ways of writing come together in this book. The narrator uses her own personal memories and life alongside poetry, letters, episodes of the Twilight Zone and political narratives together and merges them so well to show the terrors and horror that people lived through during the Pinochet regime.

I learned so much from this book about Chile’s history, which I didn’t know much about before. It was also a new leap for me into Chile’s literature, with which I am not as familiar as I would like to be. I also connected so much with the narrator of this book. At points, I felt like I was the one experiencing everything that the narrator is experiencing in this book and that’s how powerful the writing is.

Overall:  Again, I adored this book. I love Fernandez's writing. It is so beautiful and she merges words and different references so well together. It is a good introduction to a part of Chile’s history from the perspective of people who lived through it and who suffered the most, instead it being from the point of view of the historians. Honestly, I will be re-reading this book and recommending it to everyone. I hope I get to read more of her writing soon, too. 

About the Author: 

Nona Fernández was born in Santiago, Chile. She is an actress and writer and has published two plays, a collection of short stories, and six novels, including Space Invaders and The Twilight Zone, which was awarded the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize. Space Invaders was also longlisted for the 2019 National Book Awards for Translated Literature. The Twilight Zone was a finalist for the 2021 National Book Award for Translated Literature. 

https://dauntbookspublishing.co.uk/authors/nona-fernandez

Nona Fernandez - Space Invaders

Nona Fernandez - Space Invaders  

5 ⭐

Genre: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Translated Fiction, Latin American Literature, Novella. 

Translated by: Natasha Wimmer  

Original Title: Space Invaders

Original Language:  Spanish 

Pages: 96

Format: Paperback Proof 

Publisher: Daunt Books Publishing 

Date Published: 7th July 2022 

Huge Thank You to Daunt Books Publishing for a proof copy. 

Book Blurb: 

Space Invaders is the story of a group of childhood friends who, in adulthood, are preoccupied with 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.

My Review: 

In this short novella, Nona Fernandez explores memories of a group of friends who lived their childhood during Chile’s Pinochet regime. These friends remember their classmate Estrella Gonzalez Jepssen who one day stops coming to school. Her friends are confused about her disappearance. They wonder what happened to her and all of that is captured by their dreams, fears, memories, snapshots, letters and important events during their childhood. They remember playing Space Invaders, writing letters, meeting Estrella’s parents, and seeing her in class, but these memories are blurred with reality, such as news of killings, protests, and disappearances. They use all of their senses to remember, but at times it is hard for them to understand the line between reality and fantasy. Each chapter of the book is told from a viewpoint of a different friend and there is a glimpse of what each of them is going through whilst growing up under the Pinochet regime.

In this novella, we don’t get to know the characters in depth but we learn so much about their childhood. Their dreams, fears, demons and of course their day-to-day life. I loved how the book centres around the Space Invaders video game that these friends used to play. This game is used as an analogy throughout the book, too. I also loved how each of them remember Estrella in their way, through different experiences and senses but they all have one thing in common with her. They all played Space Invaders together with her.

Overall: I honestly adored this novella. It is such a powerful read. Nona Fernandez uses simple words in such a powerful way and she doesn’t use many of them to paint such a strong tension and pictures of different memories and events that this group of friends lived through during their childhood. This story is going to stay with me for a while as it is just so powerful and beautifully written.

 

About the Author: 

Nona Fernández was born in Santiago, Chile. She is an actress and writer and has published two plays, a collection of short stories, and six novels, including Space Invaders and The Twilight Zone, which was awarded the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize. Space Invaders was also longlisted for the 2019 National Book Awards for Translated Literature. The Twilight Zone was a finalist for the 2021 National Book Award for Translated Literature. 

https://dauntbookspublishing.co.uk/authors/nona-fernandez