Description
Structured like the Chilean Academic Aptitude Test, this inventive novel turns standardized questions into a living narrative engine—asking readers to exclude terms, reorder sentences, choose the best completion, and demonstrate comprehension through carefully constrained choices. As the test format unfolds, it becomes a sly and unsettling lens on language, memory, and the ways institutions shape what can be said, believed, or remembered, with recurring echoes of Chile’s political past. Alejandro Zambra’s sharp wordplay and experimental, “hermit crab” approach—where form carries the weight of meaning—transform an exam into a meditation on trust, authority, and the personal cost of living under oppressive systems. Part linguistic puzzle and part cultural critique, the book invites you to answer, but also to question the very logic of the answers.
Available Editions
paperback
Penguin Books
Published Jan 1, 2016
128 pages
ISBN: 9780143109198
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Details
First Published
2016
Language
spa
Translation
From: spa
Content Warnings
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