The characters of this novel are searching for a different life. Some of them leave their work in the cotton factory and become sex workers in the hot springs resort, while one of them enters prison of his own accord in search of calm. A third goes to her hometown, discovering strange caves and tunnels, while a fourth chooses a refuge in A rural province, where Chinese herbs are used in traditional medicine.
These characters are intertwined in multiple emotional and physical relationships, while each of them seems like a mirror of the other, as the story of each of them begins where the previous one left off, in a fluid temporal structure.
In this novel, which was longlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2019, Tsun Shieh writes about the meaning of life in its relationship to love, sex, birthplace and work, and about the vanishing border between life and death, between wakefulness and sleep, in a blurry and turbulent plot full of sensual descriptions and vivid metaphors. , its aspects resonate with echoes of magical realism.
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.
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