Curfew: A Novel - Softcover

Donoso, José

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802133819 ISBN 13: 9780802133816

Publisher: Grove Press, 1994

Synopsis

Curfew takes place during one twenty-four hour period in January 1985. Matilde Neruda, widow of the Nobel Prize-winning poet, has just passed away, and various factions are rallying to turn the event to their advantage: for Pinochet's junta, it represents a chance to assert political authority, while for the intellectuals who had basked in the Nerudas' light, it is an opportunity to grab the spoils of the estate. Against this backdrop of complex, often conflicting motivations, Donoso weaves a portrait of a society struggling to fashion a daily existence for itself, and of an intelligentsia vainly attempting to salvage the remnants of glory days long gone by. But Curfew is also a story of the tragic love between Judit Torre, an upper-middle-class radical who wants to escape her bitter past; and Mañungo Vera, a native son returning after a successful career as a European pop singer. In the zone between documentary-like realism and grotesque absurdity, José Donoso evokes the suffocating atmosphere of a country under dictatorship, and its quietly devastating effect on the actions of those who live there.

About this title

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Spanish

From Publishers Weekly

This is the political novel Donoso was unable to write while in exile from Chile. Unlike the allegorical A House in the Country, his seventh book provides a gritty, realistic, yet eloquent vision of the author's beleaguered homeland12 years into Pinochet's dictatorship. Manungo Vera, a pop singer who has had some success in Europe but is now on the way down, returns to Santiago and is swept up in preparations for the funeral of Matilde Neruda, widow of the poet. Vera meets an old lover, Judit Torre, at a bar. The radical daughter of a wealthy fathera front page headline called her a "Debutante Turned Criminal"Judit symbolizes elitist alienation. After an intense bout of lovemaking, and a near brush with death, the two join the huge crowd that has gathered at the cemetery for the funeral, now an anarchic battleground as both the left and right try to manipulate the event to their own advantage. Time is compressed into 24 hours, giving a heady urgency to the lovers' plans. Donoso's powerful vision of contemporary Chileseen through the grotesque optic that is his trademarkmakes Curfew an important literary event.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Grove Press
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0802133819
• ISBN 13: 9780802133816
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320