Chiquitita

Synopsis

Marisol’s country is collapsing. A military coup sends the five-year-old and her family fleeing into the night. They seek shelter in a refugee camp where her parents try to protect her from danger while they await asylum abroad.

Marisol spends her adult life trying to forget her childhood, the aunts and uncles she left behind and the friends whose names she no longer recalls. But when her partner starts to ask about her past, she finds herself confronting the memories that haunt her.

Chiquitita is a tender novel about flight and exile, the passing of time and the experiences that remain with us, refusing erasure.

Author

Pedro Carmona-Alvarez is a Norwegian novelist and poet of Chilean descent. As a child he moved to Norway with his family as refugees. In his novels he writes about the challenges that immigrants face, as well as universal themes of love and grief.

First published in 1997, Carmona-Alvarez has since gone on to win the Cappelen Damm prize 2004, and be longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award 2017.