Kamchatka (en español)

by Marcelo Figueras

Overview

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 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 el género. «Tiene Kamchatka rasgos de obra maestra […]. Es un tierno, severo y conmovedor poema elegíaco que, bajo la intensidad de sus silencios de paredes adentro, esconde el seco golpe de ruido y de furia de una tragedia colectiva de proporciones inabarcables.» Ángel Fernández-Santos. El País, de Madrid

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9788420489056
Publisher:	ALFAGUARA
Publication date:	07/15/2010
Sold by:	PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE GRUPO EDITORIAL
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
File size:	443 KB
Language:	Spanish

About the Author

Marcelo Figueras (Buenos Aires, 1962) es un periodista y escritor argentino, autor de relatos cortos y novelas.

Se inició en el periodismo trabajando para diversos periódicos y revistas tales como Clarín, El Periodista o Humor. Fue director de la revista mensual Caín, y ha colaborado en prensa española como El País. Compagina su labor literaria con la de guionista cinematográfico (Plata quemada, Kamchatka, Peligrosa obsesión, Rosario Tijeras y Las viudas de los jueves). Algunos de sus relatos fueron publicados en antologías como La selección argentina.

En 1992 publicó su primera novela: El muchacho peronista. Luego vinieron otras, como Kamchatka (2003), finalista en el IFFP (el premio más importante que los ingleses conceden a un escritor de otra lengua) y ganadora del Valle-Inclán Prize, La batalla del calentamiento (2006) o Aquarium (2009).

No es el clásico escritor que sólo se siente cómodo en la quietud silenciosa de las bibliotecas, también le gusta la adrenalina. Trabajó para la revista española Planeta Humano y en Israel cubrió el conflicto palestino como corresponsal de guerra.

Su obra ha sido traducida a numerosos idiomas.

Marcelo Figueras (Buenos Aires, 1962) es un periodista y escritor argentino, autor de relatos cortos y novelas.

Se inició en el periodismo trabajando para diversos periódicos y revistas tales como Clarín, El Periodista o Humor. Fue director de la revista mensual Caín, y ha colaborado en prensa española como El País. Compagina su labor literaria con la de guionista cinematográfico ( Plata quemada, Kamchatka, Peligrosa obsesión, Rosario Tijeras y Las viudas de los jueves). Algunos de sus relatos fueron publicados en antologías como La selección argentina.

En 1992 publicó su primera novela: El muchacho peronista. Luego vinieron otras, como Kamchatka (2003), finalista en el IFFP (el premio más importante que los ingleses conceden a un escritor de otra lengua) y ganadora del Valle-Inclán Prize, La batalla del calentamiento (2006) o Aquarium (2009).

No es el clásico escritor que sólo se siente cómodo en la quietud silenciosa de las bibliotecas, también le gusta la adrenalina. Trabajó para la revista española Planeta Humano y en Israel cubrió el conflicto palestino como corresponsal de guerra.

Su obra ha sido traducida a numerosos idiomas.

Editorial Reviews

In this meandering English-language debut from Figueras, a 10-year-old Argentinean boy's whimsical inner life helps him both explain and digest his family's fate in the aftermath of the 1976 coup. When his parents' leftist activism forces the family into hiding, the boy decides to call himself Harry after his idol, Houdini. Ensconced in a villa outside Buenos Aires, Harry staves off the boredom of being in hiding by playing the board game Risk (his favorite territory being the novel's namesake), working out with the cool 18-year-old activist staying with the family, and fantastical forays into the lives of his various heroes—Superman, Aristotle, Arthur of Avalon—whose stories Harry relates to his own life with uninhibited passion. The reader knows from the first chapter that Harry's family will be torn apart, yet Figueras is intent on leaving out any "grown-up" facts that would explain the ordeal, focusing instead on Harry's reflections on the malleability of memory. Yet because of the narrator's young age, conclusions such as "Time is weird" might feel more astute if they were grounded in a more trenchant narrative. (May)

Publishers Weekly

A rich imaginative life helps a 10-year-old boy deal with the aftermath of Argentina's 1976 military junta, though American readers not well versed in the political history of the novelist's homeland might find some of this as perplexing as the narrator does.

Originally published in Spanish in 2003, this novel of very short chapters—few longer than a couple pages—follows the structure of a school day ("First Period: Biology," "Second Period: Geography" et al.). Yet such order is at odds with the chaos in which a politically active family finds itself following the coup. All sorts of people with whom the lawyer father had been associated were disappearing, and if the family didn't want to join the ranks of the disappeared, it must abandon its home for a series of mysterious safe houses, and assume a new identity in the process. For the boy and his younger brother (known throughout the narrative only as "the Midget"), there's a sense of adventure in all this, despite leaving friends and everything familiar behind. An avid reader and superhero fan, the boy rechristens himself Harry (after Harry Houdini) and finds symbolic refuge in the fantasy territory of Kamchatka, from the Risk board game which he plays with his father. "I believe all time occurs simultaneously," the narrator keeps repeating, the novel's mantra. And there are times when the narrative becomes unmoored from its chronological bearings, when the perspective is far more philosophically mature than that of a 10-year-old. "I believe that stories do not end, because even when the protagonists are dead, their actions still have an impact on the living. This is why I believe that History is like an ocean into which rivers of individual histories flow...We are bound together in a web that spans all of space—all living creatures are connected in some intimate way: a web large enough to include all those alive today, but also all those of yesterday and tomorrow."

A novel about the stories we tell ourselves to give shape and meaning to our lives.

Kirkus Reviews - Kikus Reviews

A rich imaginative life helps a 10-year-old boy deal with the aftermath of Argentina's 1976 military junta, though American readers not well versed in the political history of the novelist's homeland might find some of this as perplexing as the narrator does.

Originally published in Spanish in 2003, this novel of very short chapters—few longer than a couple pages—follows the structure of a school day ("First Period: Biology," "Second Period: Geography" et al.). Yet such order is at odds with the chaos in which a politically active family finds itself following the coup. All sorts of people with whom the lawyer father had been associated were disappearing, and if the family didn't want to join the ranks of the disappeared, it must abandon its home for a series of mysterious safe houses, and assume a new identity in the process. For the boy and his younger brother (known throughout the narrative only as "the Midget"), there's a sense of adventure in all this, despite leaving friends and everything familiar behind. An avid reader and superhero fan, the boy rechristens himself Harry (after Harry Houdini) and finds symbolic refuge in the fantasy territory of Kamchatka, from the Risk board game which he plays with his father. "I believe all time occurs simultaneously," the narrator keeps repeating, the novel's mantra. And there are times when the narrative becomes unmoored from its chronological bearings, when the perspective is far more philosophically mature than that of a 10-year-old. "I believe that stories do not end, because even when the protagonists are dead, their actions still have an impact on the living. This is why I believe that History is like an ocean into which rivers of individual histories flow...We are bound together in a web that spans all of space—all living creatures are connected in some intimate way: a web large enough to include all those alive today, but also all those of yesterday and tomorrow."

A novel about the stories we tell ourselves to give shape and meaning to our lives.

Kirkus Reviews