Andrés Kalawski has prestige as a playwright and author of children’s books. He now ventures into literature for adult readers with this novel that is part of the experimental current of narrative. It is a well-written book, with an adequate command of the Spanish that we speak in Chile, with very short sentences separated by a full stop. The action takes place in a non-existent world, in which there are places that have the same names as places in Chile, such as Lo Espejo or Quilicura. But it is not about Chile, nor the world we know, much less the people we usually bump into when we turn a corner. The people who live in the pages of this book are incredible. Let’s look at an example of the first pages:
“People are divided in various ways. The guards. The guards wear blue. There aren’t that many, but they are enough so that there is always someone watching. A little further, never in the corner. It always seems as if they emerge from within a group. A guard is a guard if he is dressed in blue, with a cap and has a shovel. The shovels are not uniform, each one contributes their own. Some even have new blades. Maybe they broke the previous one. When someone makes a disturbance, a guard throws a shovelful of dirt at them on the back or in the face. If there is no loose soil, it could be debris or small objects. When they receive the land, people generally keep quiet, sit on the ground or leave and nothing else happens, but if they insist the guard hits them with the shovel until they are stunned or even killed.”
Well, in addition to guards, there are sleepers, who spend the day dreaming, and writers, who circulate among the sleepers to take note of the first words they say when they wake up. Writers sometimes try to write their own words, but the result is not the same.
Mario lives in that world, whose ambition is to be a chef. Cooks enjoy a special status, almost like our politicians: they are allowed everything. Mario meets Elena and with her he lives a surprising adventure, in which they end up killing a guard and must flee to the other side of a river, where there is ice and a terrible snow falls.
All this has no explanation. Things simply happen, with a kind of fatality that the author does not clarify why, that Mario and Elena do not understand and the reader can rack their brains during and after reading to discover a meaning.
Experimental literature is not new. It had its boom in France, in 1952, when Alain Robbe Grillet published “The Rubbers”, a book with which the movement called “nouveau roman” began, the new novel, which would find an echo in cinematography with the “nouvelle vague”. , the new wave, in which Robbe Grillet also actively participated.
In Chile, many authors have also sought to subvert traditional literature, and the one who is most remembered in this sense is Juan Luis Martínez, author of a book titled precisely “The New Novel”, of which the Chilean Memory page of the National Library, says: “The new novel is probably one of the most enigmatic books in Chilean literature, allowing the most diverse readings and interpretations to this day. Considered by many as the first book-object of our poetry.” Because yes, Martínez’s new novel is a book of poetry.
However, “Cuchillos”, by Andrés Kalawski, is clearly a novel, although it is difficult to discover its hidden meaning.
Datasheet:
“Knives,” novel, Andrew Kalawski, Laurel Publishing, 116 pages.