Under the roof of a modest hostel in a poor neighborhood in the Chilean capital, a strange group of guests meets, including workers, trade unionists, students, traffic police, and performance artists. Let them all witness the last days of the rule of the Popular Union headed by Salvador Allende, before the bloody coup led by General Pinochet took place and changed the history of Chile forever. Thus, this hostel turns into something similar to an operations room through which some Chilean leftists try to protect the socialist government and stand up to fascism. And among all of them, Arturo, the braggart and virginal football player, coming from the south to the capital, and burdened with dreams of fame and unsatisfied desires, tries to discover himself and determine his position on everything that is happening around him.
“I Dreamed That the Snow Was Burning” is the first novel by Chilean writer Antonio Scarmeta, and one of his most important works. In it, the features of a special, diverse style are established in terms of rhythms and narrative techniques, in which imagination blends with reality, and in which sarcastic humor alleviates the harshness of dramatic events. The book is a living document of the dialogues, conflicts, and popular mood that prevailed in Chile at the most pivotal moments in its history.
About the content of the book:
They are literary texts that vary between classical and Nabati prose and poetry, in which the heartbeats of love... joy... contemplation... silence... and sadness... are evident for the most beautiful years of life, the greatest joy, the happiest feeling, the most pain, and the bitterest sadness. .
After losing hope of proving the existence of the Sumakiat Library, which disappeared under mysterious circumstances in the early 1960s, one of her books appears almost out of nowhere, more than twenty kilometers away from its location and disappearance: the complete book “Al-Shawqiyyat,” and on its inner page is written “Sammaqiyat Library.” ", and a serial number was entered.
This book revives Tawfiq Al-Khadra's hope in proving the existence of the library, which has actually become an imaginary library that never existed, because everyone denied its existence in the first place. He searches for the rest of the books, traces how they reached the people he found them with, and little by little the facts of what happened on that distant day in which the library disappeared and Faris Abu Lawz was killed are revealed to him.
Angel Santiago, the ambitious young dreamer, and Bergara Gray, the famous and experienced thief, benefit from a general presidential pardon and are released from prison on the same day.
Santiago seeks revenge for his past and the harsh prison experience, with a major theft that he hopes will build a new future for him, and he helps him carry it out after Gray hesitates, who only seeks to restore his previous life.
Their adventure intersects with Victoria, a school student who dreams of being a ballet dancer despite all the circumstances she suffers from.
In his award-winning novel, Planeta, Scarmetta tells a warm, emotional story about three people united by love, friendship, and hope for a better future, in a country still living in the shadows of a defunct dictatorship.
