Mapocho

"If we look at the memory of Mapocho -says Nona Fernández in the epilogue that closes this volume- we will see garbage and dirt, lifeless bodies, pieces of a cyclical story that seems to tell us that everything is as always, and that we wander condemned of a always to another always. I think I wrote this book trying to break that spell. Collecting all the dirt that I found in the river, attending to it as a call for help is answered. And the thing is that the Mapocho is there, it always has been, flowing in the patio of our house, dark, filthy and smelly, trying to remember something about us that we don't know or don't want to know. I wanted to write about that something". Mapocho delves into the darkest regions of the past of a city, Santiago, and an entire country, Chile, to relate the fate of the protagonist, the magnetic Rucia. Foundational book, with enveloping prose, in it all the elements that have placed Nona Fernández among the most relevant contemporary narrators are obvious.