Clandestine in Chile: Gabriel Garcia Marquez's nonfiction

When a Nobel Prize-winning novelist ventriloquises Chile’s prominent writer and filmmaker, the result is certainly a no blah-kind-of-reportage: it is eloquent in style, as though Garcia Marquez himself has put Miguel Littin’s shoes on during the years of his exile, as if Garcia Marquez and Littin are no different individuals—as though they bought braved the life outside Chile to plan on the fall of Pinochet.

Image source: www.nybooks.com

Garcia Marquez’s intentions are clear: he is writing Littin’s years of exile not just to highlight the benighted Chile in the hands of Pinochet and the United States but also to make Littin’s story as realistic as how really the filmmaker has lived his life outside the bosom of Latin America. The result: a first-person narrative of pure entertainment, desperation, and not-so-laughable realities that befall the filmmaker-turned-middle-aged caper and vainglorious artist.

Image source: www.guardian.co.uk

Clandestine in Chile is honest to its goal. It never disappoints and it is never more than picturesque as Garcia Marquez’s magic realist novels. It is pure reportage, as though magic, in its absence, has played well to make this short yarn dance gracefully. However, the real magic is in Garcia Marquez’s writing acumen, his keenness to unite the techniques he has used in novels with Miguel Littin’s unadulterated account of his self-imposed expiation to come up with a powerful book that could have awarded Garcia Marquez a separate Nobel award: The Peace Prize.

Image source: www.littinmenz.com

Ken Von Kohorn is a nonfiction writer who writes on socio-political issues. This Twitter Page shows an elaborate account of his works.