’You don’t know us, ’ the writer said. 'We’re different here in Chile.’
Ariel Dorfman’s early novel Hard Rain was written in the last chaotic months before the Pinochet bloodbath ended Allende’s elected government. The publication of this book to acclaim outside Chile enabled the author to escape into exile.
Here is all the drama and tension of those last months and days, vividly delivered through the eyes and experience of one of Latin America’s greatest writers. The tragedy of fifty years ago now comes alive again, in George Shivers’ expert English translation.
’That was Chile: all these individual wills, thoughts, journeys, betrayals, acts of generosity, acts of faith, obscenities, evasions;…you’d have to freeze time and bring every life to a halt so that no one would forget what had happened at that precise moment…’ – from Hard Rain
Spis treści
Acclaim for Hard Rain
Preface to the English Translation
All you need is a body
That’s all I can tell you
Rough Draft
Commentaries
The time had come
Dear Mr Reyes
He has ten minutes
Birds and Worms
Mama was waiting for me
Final Term Paper
The Literary-Artistic Exhibition SHIT
Having read all too patiently
JAP-ening
Prologue
I’d like a love story
That was before Jane arrived
It is necessary to anticipate
Dear Mr Reyes
On the other side of the mirror
Probably an accident
Chaos and consciousness-raising
Final Project
O autorze
GEORGE SHIVERS is a distinguished Spanish-English and Portuguese English literary translator who was a professor of Spanish in the Department of Modern Languages at Washington College for many years and is still engaged in teaching in Maryland. Besides Hard Rain, his translations include several other works by Ariel Dorfman: The Last Song of Manuel Sendero, My House Is on Fire, and Someone Writes to the Future. He has also translated works by the Brazilian writer Márcio Souza. George Shivers wrote many of the Spanish-English translations for articles in the volume Guide to Documentary Sources for the Andes, published by the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.