Author: Roberto Ampuero.
Last Tuesday, Casa América presented the book Nunca volveré a Berlín (I will never go back to Berlin), by Roberto Ampuero.
After the fall of the Wall and the dissolution of the German Democratic Republic, Erich Honecker finds refuge in Santiago de Chile, where he bargains with death and the judgement of history. Patricio Dupré, a Chilean and former refugee in East Germany, becomes embroiled in a shocking plot when he gets a job as a translator for the leader of the regime that undermined his youthful dreams as a philosophy student at the Karl-Marx-Universität in Leipzig. He is in the midst of this when he is reunited with Valentina Bode, his former childhood sweetheart, a young woman from whom he was separated by the Wall. The years have passed, she is no longer the same and hides dark secrets linked to the German Socialist Unity Party, which motivate his journey to the end of the world.
Roberto Ampuero narrates in three voices: those of Honecker, Dupré and Bode. He contrasts their visions and unravels the skein of a love that fell victim to international intrigues. Never Going Back to Berlin reveals itself as a novel of spies and impossible love and, above all, as a profoundly human testimony to an era that continues to generate debate. The Cold War is over and the author takes us into the last months of the PSUA secretary general’s life in his isolated Chilean refuge, where dreams, frustrations and secrets converge. The captivating narrative, enriched by experience in real socialisms, captures the final sighs of an era and the dilemmas that haunt the human heart.
Pages: 288
Publisher: PLAZA&JANES
Binding: Soft cover
ISBN: 9788401034947
RPP: 21,75 euros
