Óxido de Carmen

The literature written in Chile during the rule of General Augusto Pinochet remains largely unknown to English-speaking readers. One of the most important novels to emerge from that period, Ana María del Río's Carmen's Rust creates a gripping microcosm of the dictatorship. Carmen, a teenage girl, attempts to overcome the social isolation and guilt family matriarchs have instilled in her, as her budding sexuality forms a powerful resistance against their domestic control.

Forced to submit her book to government censors, del Río carefully constructed her critique, setting the novel in Chile during the 1950s with artfully masked references and significant silences. Reminiscent of Kafka and Orwell, Carmen's Rust recounts a claustrophobic domestic nightmare-while tacitly attacking the bourgeois values and murderous control of the regime. Published on the thirtieth anniversary of the overthrow of Salvador Allende and available in English for the first time, this literary tour de force offers an astonishing portrait of dictatorship and political violence.