Summary
The world-famous literary exile Salman Rushdie coined the phrase "the countries of the fantasy" to describe those literary spaces created by writers separated from their homeland, who have lost not only a citizenship but a language that sustains a lifetime of cultural assumptions. Wandering the land of the lost is often tough living, but when it comes to literature, exile is unusually fertile terrain. In a very fundamental way, the displaced writer often strikes the deepest human chords as provincial judgments and nationalistic frames of reference fall away.
At 5 p.m. Monday, Nov. 1, Ruben Palma reads from his new collection of 10 short stories, The Trail We Leave (Curbstone Press, 2004), at Garcia Street Books. Curbstone, located in Willimantic, Conn., is a national leader in translating writers from Latin America. The nonprofit press publishes high-quality writing with social-justice implications. Palma's countryman Ariel Dorfman, author of the widely performed Chilean drama Death and the Maiden, introduced the writer to Curbstone. "We borrowed $3,000 to start publishing books we knew mainstream publishers wouldn't touch, and it's been like quicksand ever since," chuckles Curbstone Press co- director Alexander Taylor.See the full content of this document
Extract
The Language of Exile
Palma, exiled from his Chilean homeland at 19 during the Augusto Pinochet regime (1973-90), has lived in Denmark since 1974. He began writing in Danish at age 31.
"I grew up in a poor Chilean barrio with a strong, old- fashioned, macho culture," he tells Taylor in a published int...See the full content of this document
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