Space Invaders
​Nona Fernández

Potent, thoughtful, and marvelously written, Space Invaders follows a group of friends as they look back on the events leading up to their classmate Estrella González’s sudden disappearance during Augusto Pinochet’s 1973-1990 military dictatorship in Chile.

Years after the sudden disappearance of their childhood friend Estrella, now-adults Zuñiga, Acosta, Bustamante, Maldonado, Riquelme, Donoso, and Fuenzalida are still plagued by ominous dreams and varying, hazy memories featuring their former classmate. Having arrived at the Avenida Matta school in 1980 when she was just ten years old, Estrella quickly becomes part of the book’s central clique, playing games with Riquelme at her house, exchanging heartfelt letters with Maldonado, and harboring secret crushes, until one day she stops showing up to school. Estrella vanishes, leaving almost no trace behind, at the very moment that chaos and violence finally breach her closest friends’ lives.

Part meditation, part reconstruction of events, and part catalog of nightmares, Nona Fernández’s Space Invaders grapples with the question of how historical trauma impacts and distorts the memory, consciousness, and selfhood of those who are both its witnesses and survivors. Its multiplicity of voices and fractured recollections produce a disorientating atmosphere, one that unsettles the reader and, in some ways, echoes the psychological turmoil experienced by the central characters in the aftermath of Estrella’s unexplained absence. A compelling English-language debut that sheds light on an entire generation’s fraught coming of age, this haunting novella packs a powerful punch.

Nona Fernández is an actress and writer from Santiago, Chile. The author of novels such as Chilean Electric (2015) and La Dimensión Desconocida (2016), Fernández is the recipient of the Premio Municipal de Literatura, the National Book Council Prize for Best Book, and the Premio Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.

Space Invaders is a publication by Graywolf Press. Click here to purchase.

Reviewed by
Isabella Pilotta Gois
​12/27/2020

Isabella Pilotta Gois is a Venezuelan writer and recent graduate from the University of Pennsylvania, where she studied Comparative Literature. She currently resides in Puerto Rico.

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