MAMBO
Alejandra Moffat
NOVEL | 2022, 2025 | 178 pages
During the 1980s, a family lives clandestinely in the south of Chile. We know little about the parents: that the mother makes maps every time they go for a walk at night and that, every time she receives an envelope, she locks herself in the bathroom to smoke. Of the father, that he draws anthropomorphic animals in his notebook, such as an eagle with dark glasses or a menacing puma. From these clues, scraps of letters, strange visits and words spoken in hushed tones, two girls try to elucidate the private life of their parents. And so, thanks to their children's imagination, the two sisters manage to transform the ominous reality that surrounds them, although it inevitably ends up catching up with them.
Ana, the youngest daughter of the family, will be in charge of guiding us through this incredible story in which imagination and play act as mitigating agents of the horror of those years. MAMBO is a moving text about the impact of the military dictatorship on family intimacy and its different generations, as well as the possible strategies to combat it.
Ricardo Piglia once wrote that when we say we can’t stop reading a novel, it is because we want to keep listening to the narrating voice. And that is precisely what happens in this book that has been delicately written by Alejandra Moffat: a new, intimate, and dazzling voice.
RIGHTS: spanish (chile) MONTACERDOS | spanish (latin america) HACHETTE | spanish (spain) LAS AFUERAS
“Moffat writes loosely, creating buoyant atmospheres that hint about the ties between the state of the family and the country and capturing childhood with diligent prose that is strongly vital and is infused with an important freshness despite the environment that is heavy with fatal signs. The dark story of the 80s is narrated with emotion despite the excess of childhood adventures—the family never breaks up, the parents never show hints of failure, and the girls pick up on that enthusiasm.”
“Mambo, Alejandra Moffat’s novel, has a voice that submerges itself in childhood and presents a perspective charged with horror during the dictatorship, but its beauty lies in how the protagonist never seems to lose her innocence and continues to be a girl while living in an encapsuled world, like in fairytales.”
BY ALEJANDRA MOFFAT:
MAMBO
NOVEL, 2022
El hacedor de camas
NOVEL, 2011