Kamchatka

The narrator of Kamchatka looks back to a pivotal moment in his childhood in Argentina, trying to make sense of the traumatic events that tore his family apart.

One day when he was ten years old, his mother came into his school and took him away from his normal life. His parents were political activists, hunted by the military regime. The narrator, his parents and his five-year-old brother – known as the Midget – drove straight out of Buenos Aires and went into hiding in an abandoned country house.

The family tries to keep up a semblance of normality, turning it into a game. His dad carries on beating him at Risk while the narrator debates the relative superpowers of Batman and Superman and tries to rescue dying toads from the swimming pool. But underneath it all is a sense of threat: the Midget is secretly wetting the bed, his parents disappear for hours on end and the narrator badly misses his old life. Both parents and children try to hide their fear, protecting each other for as long as they possibly can.

Despite the underlying tragedy, Figueras creates a humorous and very convincing portrait of a family with all its nicknames, legends, habits and routines. Translator Frank Wynne perfectly captures the balance between the narrator’s child-like voice and the reflections of his more worldly adult self. The result is a funny, moving but never sentimental story of a family pulling together through dangerous times.