Dile que no estoy
Alejandra Costamagna
NOVEL | 2012 | 122 pages
Lautaro, the son of Miguel Palma and Oriana Lombardi, is a silent aspiring pianist who roams the streets of Santiago and Calbuco, as well as certain bars like Trumao and Las Tinajas de Villa Alegre. He livens up parties, plays in a supermarket, and gets lost in the conservatory's record library for hours. Through his stories, Alejandra Costamagna's Dile que no estoy recounts the changes in Chile and in Chilean language throughout the 80s, 90s, and 2000s, including all of the unfulfilled promises and traumas. As he grows up, Lautaro—who imagined himself trapped in a fishbowl as a child—starts to feel more alienated from his family, history, and country, just like an entire generation.
RIGHTS: spanish SEIX BARRAL
“Dile que no estoy is the prose of the everyday, binding and without hierarchy, that doesn’t shy away from any of the possible details of the time periods it covers, or from the different viewpoints that may exist about them. Costamagna was able to produce a wise and solid novel that leaves nothing to desire from the best that have been written in Chile and Latin America in recent years.”
“A novel that winks to the classics while remaining unique at the same time. An appropriation of genre with infinite layers that overlap, with characters that move you and an exquisite sensibility. It is the right time to re-read it and celebrate this book’s rescue, because we are in the presence of good literature. Literature, full stop.”
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