Never Did the Fire unfolds in the humdrum of everyday working class existence, making the afterlife of an agitator that of anyone living next door. For one old couple, brought together years ago in an underground cell, the revolution has ended in a small apartment, a grinding job caring for the bodies of the unwell well-to-do, and all the aches and pains that go with a long life and a long marriage. Untethered from the political action that defined them, and mourning the loss of their child, their bonds dissolve, but the consequences of their former life, and their dependence on each other, won't let them go.A literary icon in Chile and a major figure in the anti-Pinochet resistance, Diamela Eltit is at the height of her powers in this novel of breakdowns. Never Did the Fire evokes the charged air of Chile's violent past, and the burdens it carries into the present-day, when the structures we built, and the ones we succumbed to, no longer offer us any comfort or prospect of salvation.
Author: Diamela Eltit
Publisher: Charco Press
Published: 04/05/2022
Pages: 130
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.45lbs
Size: 7.70h x 5.00w x 0.50d
ISBN: 9781913867218
About the Author
Diamela Eltit is one of Latin America's most daring writers and is highly regarded for her avant-garde initiatives in the world of letters. Eltit began her engagement with literature in her native Chile during the years of the Pinochet dictatorship when she participated in the collective CADA, staging art actions against the dictatorship, and published her first novels, Lumpérica (1983) and Por la patria (1986), to universal acclaim. Since then she has published, among others, El Cuarto Mundo (1988), El padre mío (1989), Vaca sagrada (1991), Los vigilantes (1994), Los trabajadores de la muerte (1998), Mano de obra (2002), Jamás el fuego nunca (2007) and Impuesto a lacarne (2010). She has been honoured repeatedly by international organizations, among them the Modern Language Association in the United States and Casa de las Americas in Havana, and has received fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the Fondo Nacional de Investigaciones, the Social Science Research Council, CONICYT, and the Guggenheim Foundation. Eltit has also held positions as writer-in-residence at Brown University, Washington University in St. Louis, Columbia University, UC Berkeley, the University of Virginia, Stanford University, Johns Hopkins University and the University of Cambridge (UK). She is currently the Distinguished Global Professor of Creative Writing in Spanish at NYU.
Daniel Hahn is a writer, editor and translator with some fifty books to his name. His translations (from Portuguese, Spanish and French) include fiction from Europe, Africa and the Americas and non-fiction by writers ranging from Portuguese Nobel laureate José Saramago to Brazilian footballer Pelé. Recent books include the new Oxford Companion to Children's Literature and a translation of an Angolan novel. He is a former chair of the Society of Authors and is presently on the board of a number of organisations that deal with literature, literacy, translation and free expression. In 2021 Daniel was made an OBE for his services to literature.