Chile: A Traveler's Literary Companion (Traveler's Literary Companions) Paperback – March 1, 2003

This was a great book to read prior to our recent trip to Chile; I definitely recommend it to anyone intererested in Chile, or contemplating a trip there. Opened up literary doors I never knew existed...

I read it before my trip to Chile; my husband read it after we got back. We both enjoyed it and felt that it added a lot of background to our trip.

Sure, Silver could have had a larger selection of authors (including Isabel Allende, Bolaño...and more conservative writers to balance out the liberal ones), but her collection is pretty good. Most people will get the proverbial "good feel" for Chile in general. If readers new to Chilean writing like these stories enough, they will probably go out in search of other Chilean novelists, poets, essayists, historians, etc. If not, they can bone up on writers from Nepal, Ivory Coast, Moldova...or wherever.Here is the Table of Contents from the publisher's website:EL CENTRO1. SantiagoDarío Oses ...The Poet, Wine, and SheepPedro Lemebel ...The Queen of the CornerJosé Donoso ...CurfewAriel Dorfman ...The Nanny and the IcebergJorge Edwards ...My Name Is Ingrid Larsen2. Along the Coast:Pablo Neruda ...Roaming in ValparaísoOsvaldo Rodriguez Musso ...Valparaíso, My LoveAdolfo Couve ...Seaside ResortMarjorie Agosín ...Isla Negra3. Heartland:Beatriz García-Huidobro ...Until She Go No MoreEL NORTE1. Iquique:Patricio Riveros Olavarría ...The Ghost of the German Voyeur2. Antofagasta:Hernán Rivera Letelier ...The Señora of the Nightgowns3. Atacama:Roberto Ampuero ...The TrainRoberto Ampuero ...Afternoon in the PampaLuis Alberto Acuña ...Walking through the AtacamaEL SUR1. Concepción:Tito Matamala ...Deputies’ Street2. Temuco & the Lake District:Pablo Neruda ...The Chilean ForestMarta Brunet ...Black Bird3. Aysén:Enrique Valdés ...Window on the South4. Patagonia:Francisco Coloane ...On the Horse of DawnJosé Miguel Varas ...Pikinini5. Tierra del FuegoPatricio Manns ...A Lone HorsemanNothing on Chile's Juan Fernández Islands, but you can re-read Robinson Crusoe.Nothing on Chile's Easter Island, but the inhabitants are Polynesian for the most part. Ergo, no Nobel Prize winners way out there.

This book was published in 2003 and collected 20 works by as many Chilean writers. As far as could be judged, there were 9 short stories, 2 essays, and excerpts from 7 novels and 2 autobiographies.The oldest writers were Marta Brunet (1897-1967), described as co-founder of a regional school who wrote on landscape, rural life and the inner lives of characters, especially women. Pablo Neruda (1904-73), a major figure on the left, prominent in the poetry of his nation, Latin America, and the world. And Francisco Coloane (1910-2002), who wrote on men and the sea and has been compared to Jack London. The youngest were Beatriz García-Huidobro (1959-), Patricio Riveros Olavarría (1962-), and Tito Matamala (1963-). Others included José Donoso, Jorge Edwards, Adolfo Couve and Ariel Dorfman. Twelve of the works were translated by the collection's editor, Katherine Silver.Prominent prose writers omitted from the collection included María Luisa Bombal, a pioneer of surrealism in Latin America from the 1930s, Antonio Skármeta, the popular Isabel Allende, and the exile Roberto Bolaño.The earliest pieces appeared to be from Brunet and Coloane, dating perhaps to the 1950s, and from Neruda, whose memoirs were published in 1974. Others from the 1970s were Donoso and Enrique Valdés. From the 1980s, a time of oppressive rule, there was nothing. The majority of works in the collection, two-thirds, came from the 1990s.A number of the collection's writers -- many of them on the left -- had gone into exile after 1973, when the democratically elected, Marxist Allende government was overthrown in a military coup; these included Donoso, José Miguel Varas, Patricio Manns, Dorfman, Osvaldo Rodríguez Musso, Marjorie Agosín, and Patricio Riveros Olavarría. Some of the stories referred to the Allende government, the dictatorship that followed, and the plebescite in 1992 that had voted it out of office and begun the return to democracy.For this reader, the most interesting works by far in the book concerned Valparaíso, as described by Neruda and several others with vivid sense impressions. The excerpt from Donoso, in which a writer attended the wake for Neruda's widow and noted the passing of time, adding some historical depth. Other stories suggested the atmosphere of the capital, Santiago. Neruda described a forest in the south ("Anyone who hasn't been in the Chilean forest doesn't know this planet. I have come out of that landscape, that mud, that silence, to roam, to singing through the world"). In Couve's story a lonely, rich widow wandered among the crowds in the seaside resort of Cartagena. And Luis Alberto Acuña described a walk in the Atacama desert, with the sun pounding down. Most of these captured what the editor referred to in her introduction as the national characteristic of "lightness in the blood," an exuberance that shined through the deepest gloom.Aside from these, many selections seemed less interesting to this reader, remaining too much in the head of the narrator and lacking narrative power, and shedding less light on their regions. The works on Cuba, Brazil and Mexico in this worthwhile series seemed more revealing, to me at any rate.

Since it is short stories you can have it in the car or whatever and pick it up at odd moments. Enjoyed all the stories so far and the cultural differences are of interest while not massively jarring. But then people seem to always be people don't they? Buy and enjoy this if you like character study with interesting culture and geography.