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Kamchatka, by Marcelo Figueras
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In 1976 Buenos Aires, a ten-year-old boy lives in a world of school lessons and comic books, TV shows and games of Risk—a world in which men have superpowers and boys can conquer the globe on a rectangle of cardboard. But in his hometown, the military has just seized power, and amid a climate of increasing terror and intimidation, people begin to disappear without a trace.
When his mother unexpectedly pulls him and his younger brother from school, she tells him they’re going on an impromptu family trip. But he soon realizes that this will be no ordinary holiday: his parents are known supporters of the opposition, and they are going into hiding. Holed up in a safe house in the remote hills outside the city, the family assumes new identities. The boy names himself Harry after his hero Houdini, and as tensions rise and the uncertain world around him descends into chaos, he spends his days of exile learning the secrets of escape.
Kamchatka is the portrait of a child forced to square fantasy with a reality in which family, politics, history, and even time itself have become more improbable than any fiction. Told from the points of view of Harry as a grown man and as a boy, Kamchatka is an unforgettable story of courage and sacrifice, the tricks of time and memory, and the fragile yet resilient fabric of childhood.
- Sales Rank: #1459869 in Books
- Brand: Brand: Grove Press, Black Cat
- Published on: 2011-05-03
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.10" h x 1.10" w x 5.50" l, .85 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 312 pages
- Used Book in Good Condition
From Publishers Weekly
In this meandering English-language debut from Figueras, a 10-year-old Argentinean boy's whimsical inner life helps him both explain and digest his family's fate in the aftermath of the 1976 coup. When his parents' leftist activism forces the family into hiding, the boy decides to call himself Harry after his idol, Houdini. Ensconced in a villa outside Buenos Aires, Harry staves off the boredom of being in hiding by playing the board game Risk (his favorite territory being the novel's namesake), working out with the cool 18-year-old activist staying with the family, and fantastical forays into the lives of his various heroes—Superman, Aristotle, Arthur of Avalon—whose stories Harry relates to his own life with uninhibited passion. The reader knows from the first chapter that Harry's family will be torn apart, yet Figueras is intent on leaving out any "grown-up" facts that would explain the ordeal, focusing instead on Harry's reflections on the malleability of memory. Yet because of the narrator's young age, conclusions such as "Time is weird" might feel more astute if they were grounded in a more trenchant narrative. (May)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Review
—Short-listed for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize
—An O Magazine Summer Reading Pick
"Funny, wistful, and wise . . . [Kamchatka] suggests that our stories do not end, that heroism lies in one's ability to change, and that we all need a place where we can retreat to before we can learn to face the world again." —Tiffany Sun, O Magazine
“[A] generous, affecting novel.”—The New Yorker
“Subtle . . . Brilliantly observed, heartrending.”—Financial Times
“[Figueras] vividly evokes a child's reaction to a world beleaguered by violence. . . . [A] hopeful message about the healing powers of imagination and love.”—The New York Times
“Haunting . . . Warmhearted . . . [Kamchatka] unfolds with disarming simplicity. . . . Bursting with good humor, with a bittersweet, melancholy shadow, Figueras's superb novel amply illustrates that ‘laughing and crying at the same time is something life teaches you without you even noticing.’”—Shelf Awareness
“Interesting and insightful . . . Engrossing, often funny, and very, very unsettling.”—The Brooklyn Rail
“Kamchatka is not a nostalgic book. Its narration is unconstrained and light, entwining and sympathetic. . . . Read it, and buy yourself a board game of Risk.”—Bookslut
“Stark and immediate, more moving because it is presented without sentimentality . . . [Written] with wry comedy . . . the tenderness breaks your heart.”—Booklist
“A masterpiece . . . Written in beautiful prose.”—De Telegraaf (Netherlands)
“Interesting and insightful . . . Engrossing, often funny, and very, very unsettling.”—The Brooklyn Rail
“Figueras writes with power and insight about the ways in which a child uses imagination to make sense of terrifying and baffling reality.”—The Times (UK)
“Tender, severe, moving, elegiac.”—El País (Spain)
“Brilliant.”—The Independent
“Like Carlos Eire’s wonderfully buoyant memoir of pre-revolutionary Cuba, Waiting for Snow in Havana, Figueras chooses to capture the drumbeat of history in the small, offbeat details of a boy’s life. . . . Tinged with a doomed innocence that comes shining through Figueras’s irrepressible telling . . . Kamchatka is a colorful, unforgettable vision of a boy’s—and nation’s—attempt to make sense of a descent into darkness and chaos. It is also a moving attempt to recapture the memory of the ‘disappeared’—a trick of fate that allows loved ones to re-appear by writing about them.”—Words Without Borders Magazine
“Kamchatka is a superb novel that refracts public, political events through the sensibilities of everyday life. . . . Balances adult understanding and a child’s interests and anxieties. The language mediates between the two. Think not Melville, but the Mark Twain of Huckleberry Finn, yet starring a Huckleberry Finn who has read Melville. . . . Kamchatka came to me by chance. Don’t trust to such luck. Seek it out.”—J. Kates. The Arts Fuse (blog)
“This powerful novel brings to life the atmosphere of desperation following Argentina’s military coup of 1976. . . . A richly drawn, moving and memorable novel, a fine tribute to ‘los desaparecidos,’ Argentina’s ‘disappeared’”—Irish Examiner
“Figueras’s view of military dictatorship strikes a note that lingers for weeks.”—Frankfurter Rundschau (Germany)
About the Author
Born in 1962 in Buenos Aires, Marcelo Figueras is an award-winning journalist, screenwriter, and novelist. He has also been a war correspondent and singer. Figueras makes daily contributions to the Spanish-language literary blog El Boomeran: www.elboomeran.com. His books have previously been translated into French, German, Dutch, Polish and Russian; This is his first novel to be published in English.
Most helpful customer reviews
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
Beautiful, Joyous Melancholy
By Harkius
Overview:
This is a wonderful story. There is something almost dream-like about the enjoyable story, and the child-like innocence of the narrator as he and his family confront the military junta's activities in trying to suppress the college professors and the literate members of society. The perspective is almost unique, because there is a glimmer of the reality shining through his youthful impressions, like a palimpsest of the opression extant in the culture. While the story is not unique, the perspective elevates it beyond any similar tale that I've ever read.
A. Plot
The plot here is rendered in simplistic fashion, since it is told from the perspective of a child who has grown up under Peronist leadership. While it follows the general tropes of a coming-of-age story, it stops short of reaching maturity, leaving us with a story of a beautiful, sad, joyous time in the age of a child.
His parents, a lawyer and a teacher, are clearly within groups targeted by the military junta that overthrew the country in 1976. This story features the family of the narrator, "Harry" and their flight from Buenos Aires to a quinta in the countryside. It also details their lives there. While there, the family take on new names, reflecting their need to hide. The story details what happens to them in their exile.
B. Characters
The narrator, "Harry" is a wonderful character. He is open-minded (mostly), curious, and considerate child. Granted, some of this is likely to be a result of his own reflections about himself as a child, rather than an actual child's behavior, but it was still pleasant not to read about a child who is a miserable little jerk (like his brother, "Simon"). He is well-detailed, he develops as a character, and, generally, is everything that you'd like to see in a literary character.
"Harry"'s parents are intriguing individuals, about whom we never learn as much as we might like. They are likable, interesting, and complete. All of the characters in the novel are.
C. Setting
The novel is set in 1976 Argentina, immediately after the overthrow of the Peronist government by the military junta. Without this background, the novel would make much less sense. After all, the family IS fleeing the military junta, and this feeling of fear and oppression is palpable, despite the fact that the narrator clearly has only a dim sense of what is going on.
D. Themes
There are several beautiful themes here. One is the tension between the adult, ex post facto knowledge of what is going on during that time and the child-like wonder and frustration about being uprooted and moved to the quinta. Another theme is the fear that the parents feel for their own safety and for their family. The children, naturally enough, have little to no sense of this (except for the sensation that you occasionally get from "Harry"). There is also a clear vein of hope running through the book, as can be clearly demonstrated by the "reverse diving board" for the drowning frogs. Finally, as I said, there is a growth in the maturity of "Harry", as he transitions from a child to a young teen.
E. Point of View
The choice of the narrator was absolutely critical for this work. "Harry", the narrator, is a 10 year old Argentinean boy who loves Harry Houdini and the idea of being an escape artist. He loves his parents and even his little brother. To some extent, his perceptions of the events of that winter are probably colored by the man that he would later become, but never in a heavy-handed fashion, only ever in an additive way.
F. Aesthetics
This is a wonderfully beautiful tale. The language flows, giving you a sense of time and space, along with the feeling of timelessness that all children have. The aesthetics do nothing to detract, and only add to the pleasure of the story.
G. Translation
Since I can't read literature in Spanish, I can't be certain that the translation is accurate or that the original is this way, but there do not appear to be any linguistic difficulties that arise due to translation.
Conclusion:
I loved this book. Good characters, beautifully rendered plot, lovely, charming aesthetics. I will be recommending this to everyone that I know who enjoys literary fiction. I will read it again and again, I will pass it on to others, and recommend them to pass it on to others.
A+
Harkius
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
The past is never dead, it is not even past. ~William Faulkner
By Lonya
The past is neither dead nor past in Marcelo Figueras' beautifully crafted Kamchatka.
The Kamchatka Peninsula is the northeastern-most part of Russia and the old Soviet Union. It is surrounded by the Bering Sea, the Arctic, and the Pacific oceans. It was a cold-forbidding place, one that served as the destination point for thousands of Soviet citizens sent to spend time in the Gulag. It is also one of geographic points of interest in the old military board game Risk. The idea of Kamchatka, as set out in the board game, as a place of exile, and ultimately as a place of refuge forms the emotional core of the book around which the story revolves.
Set in Argentina in 1976, Kamchatka is the story of a young boy and his family. Argentina in 1976 was a dangerous place. The regime of Isabel Peron was ousted in a military coup followed by some extraordinarily repressive measures against suspected opponents of the junta. Thousands of people disappeared and most all of them were murdered. Kamchatka is the story of one family. Kamchatka is told in the form of a memoir written by Harry as he is known to us. Harry was 10 when the story begins. His parents are opponents of the regime and in short order Harry and his family flee from Buenos Aires to a secluded `summer cottage' where they can, hopefully, survive until the troubles are over. The family all take new names, the boy chooses to become Harry in honor of his boyhood hero, Harry Houdini.
The act of memory, of remembering, is critical to the story-line. Early on Figueras writes that sometimes, "as I remember, my voice is that of the ten-year-old boy I was then; sometimes the voice of the seventy-year-old man I am yet to be; sometimes it is my voice, at the age I am now . . . or the age I think I am. Who I have been, who I am, who I will be are all in continual conversation, each influencing the other." In lesser hands this would be nothing more than literary boilerplate, a snippet of philosophy before the writer moves on to the `heart' of the story. Although most of the story is written through the eyes of a ten-year-old, Figueras manages to insert the narrator's other voices at certain points of the book and he manages to do it seamlessly. As I read the book I could hear the different voices but the transition seemed totally natural and unaffected to me.
The structure of the story reinforces the use of those differing voices. The story's first and last chapters tell the same story; an encounter between father and son involving the word "Kamchatka" serves (in a manner reminiscent of Orson Welles' Rosebud) as both the opening note and grace-note of the tale. But as the story ends that grace note carries a far different meaning and sounds to be from a far-different voice from the ten-years olds' first telling - - -even though the words are almost the same.
Aldous Huxley once said that "[e]very man's memory is his private literature." In this instance Marcelo Figueras has taken the private literature of young Harry and turned it into a beautiful public piece of literature. This is a book that really deserves to find a wide audience. L. Fleisig
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
Beautiful novel about a tragic time in Argentina
By A lucky so-and-so
I have been interested in Argentina for a long time but do not often find satisfying novels about this country, especially about the dirty war. This novel informs the reader about Argentina's tragic history without being violent or overly detailed. Kamchatka is the story of how history affects one family, told with humor, poetry and pathos. A book like this might easily have veered into sentimentality or sermon, but the author handles it perfectly; leaving us haunted, moved, and having learned a great deal about the history and the wounds of the people of Argentina. I look forward to reading more from this writer!
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