Word: donoso
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Jose Donoso...
PUBLISHED nearly 15 years after the Chilean coup that replaced Salvador Allende's democratically elected government with a military regime, Jose Donoso's Curfew explores the harsh realities that comprise life for the millions of citizens surviving under the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. A grim portrait of terror, machine guns, armored trucks and unresolved murders, Curfew presents the life of those protesting the Pinochet government, and criticizes not only the mechanisms of the government but also the solutions of the Left...
...with a series of careful character sketches, a rapidly moving plot, and detailed scene descriptions that Donoso's novel moves, sometimes tortorously and awkwardly, as if trying to imitate the horrific lives of the people it portrays. Within Curfew's chapters of machine guns and blood, moreover, Donoso's novel proves that even in an area where police stand on every street corner and seem planted for protection, it is unclear who is the object of their guard. In Donoso's Chile nothing is sacred, no one is safe, and even love perishes in the face of political complications...
...communist demonstration, Vera has spent time in France enjoying fame, fortune, and a respite from the horrors of current Chilean life. Accompanied by his thoroughly French son, Jean-Paul, Manungo revives his ambiguities concerning Chilean politics and the Left, becoming ensnared in the political longings that, according to Donoso, inevitably catch up with all Chileans. In the process he becomes involved in an affair with a former lover, Judit Torre, an elite Chilean who seeks to avenge her rape and torture while imprisoned for political activism several years earlier...
...Curfew's plot skips around, it seems intentional. By making events take on an almost haphazard quality, Donoso shows that to live under a military dictatorship is to learn that death, imprisonment and torture are unregulated and arbitrary things. Though the action is somewhat difficult to follow, the novel itself is intriguing, and one can only hope that Donoso's words will inspire a new generation of Chileans to fight for the freedom and love they deserve...