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Figuring out the truth in post-dictatorship Chile

The Remainder
by Alia Trabucco Zeran
(And Other Stories, £10)

AT LEAST 3,000 people are officially recognised as disappeared or killed in Chile between 1973 and 1990, after the armed forces headed by General Augusto Pinochet took power from the elected government of president Salvador Allende in a bloody military coup.

The brutal regime was also responsible for the imprisonment and torture of around 40,000 survivors. Thousands of them and relatives of those disappeared still search for truth, justice and reparation and The Remainder, a debut novel by the young Chilean writer Alia Trabucco Zeran, tells the story of three broken children of former militants.

Felipe, Iquela and Paloma, now adult, live in an almost surreal Santiago smothered in ash from a volcanic eruption, as they try to make sense of Chile’s bloody past.

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