Kamchatka

This story of a 10 year old boy forced into hiding with his parents and younger brother during the “Dirty War” in Argentina is told in two voices - the young “Harry” and the older one recounting his story. The story is told in short episodes and much of the context of the story is ambiguous, just as it probably would have been to a young boy. He’s pulled out of school, given a new name, and moved out of the city in which he has grown up - all major upheavals which we follow him trying to make sense of, trying to assert order in a chaotic, uncertain world. What I loved most about this novel was how Figueras portrays “Harry” and his family - it’s a beautiful portrait of one’s relationships with parents and siblings, at show more times loving and warm and at others frustrating and incomprehensible. But it feels very real, and despite everything that they are going through, one feels how lucky they are. show less

One of the best books I have read this year. The reality of this time in Argentina's recent history is always in your awareness, lurking and chilling, but the memory blurs this even more than the child's perspective. It's terribly sad, you know even before opening the cover what is coming and yet it isn't so pervasive that the rest of the story is overshadowed. Children are brilliant and resiliant, always shaped by the adult world but somehow finding themselves in spite of dirty wars and horrible human acts. Beautiful writing, funny, tender, detailed, tragic, mundane and yet charged. Read it!

Published 5/3/11From the Publisher:Set against the backdrop of Argentina’s violent military junta in the late 1970s, Kamchatka is a wise, deeply moving drama about broken loyalties and the imaginative spaces we retreat to when we need to make sense of an unimaginable world.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 show more 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. show less

As I read I kept thinking: "Is this author primarily a screenwriter?" until I finally looked the author up online and discovered Figueras did indeed write this novel first as a screenplay.

So here is what is wrong with a novel that is first conceived as a screenplay. There will be no clear sense of an inner narrative voice driving the story. The details will be scanty. There will be no depth in the writing and every scene will feel a little bit shortchanged, word-wise--because after all the film is already there in the writer's head. Screenplay writers are used to working in conditions where the scantness of words will be made up for by moving images of film so the chapters in a screenwriter's novel will trend toward scenic shorthand.

In show more the chapters where Figueras breaks out if this limited and flat screenwriter's voice--chapter 33 stands out--to write from a more novelistic point of view, the writing is moving. But for the most part the book Kamchatka is one of the rare times where I get the feeling the movie must be better. show less

Kamchatka
Marcelo Figueras
Publicado: 2003 | 291 páginas
Novela Drama

Todos querríamos tener una armadura que nos proteja del dolor. Pero uno levanta una pared para protegerse de lo que viene de afuera y al final descubre que se ha quedado encerrado. Kamchatka es la última palabra que Harry escucha de labios de su padre. Aquel territorio fantástico e inaccesible, poblado de osos salvajes y con picos nevados envueltos en nubes de azufre, será el refugio donde ese chico de diez años se ocultará para curar sus heridas, para resistir. Para Harry, Kamchatka será su Avalón. De la mano de un niño obligado a contemplar el lado oscuro de la realidad, Marcelo Figueras nos lleva a recorrer el capítulo más aciago de nuestro pasado show more reciente. Este relato, poblado de personajes tiernos, cercanos y llenos de humor, es también una aventura: la de asomarse sobre el horizonte y descubrir que ninguna historia desaparece, simplemente cambia de género. show less

Kamchatka, a novel by Marcelo Figueras, is a fictional first-person remembrance of childhood in Argentina during the Dirty War (1976-1983), a time of political instability and government-sponsored violence when thousands of civilians were “disappeared.” The story begins when the narrator, then a ten-year-old boy, is uprooted from his comfortable life in Buenos Aries and forced to go into hiding in the country with his activist parents and younger brother.

Kamchatka is a realistic imagining of a child’s experience of political turmoil. The potential dangers take the form of vague references in overheard conversations and other oblique manifestations. In general, the narrator spends most of his time describing his (often humorous) show more exploits with his younger brother, his attempts to emulate Harry Houdini’s daring escapes, and his love of Superman. The overall effect is that of a happy childhood occasionally marred by darker overtones (e.g., the unexpected and unexplained death of a young family friend and the need to assume fake names). The narrator’s voice is charmingly naïve and optimistic except for those instances where his adult persona intrudes on his childhood experiences with over-long lectures on academic topics like astronomy or the changing concept of fatherhood over time. Kamchatka would have been better without these digressions, but the novel still succeeds as a tribute to the resilience of children and the strength of family, even in the most difficult circumstances.

This review also appears on my blog Literary License. show less

Terrific contemplation of time, memory and loss.