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The only story for young readers of the legendary Chilean songwriter and activist who became a symbol of peace amidst the brutality of Augusto Pinochet's regime.On September 11, 1973, in Santiago de Chile, Augusto Pinochet took power and installed a dictatorship in place of the democratic government of President Salvador Allende. That day Victor Jara, a young songwriter and activist, poet and playwright is arrested and imprisoned with hundreds of other people in the Santiago stadium because of his association with the socialist opposition. His hands, so crucial to playing music, are broken by one of Pinochet's soldiers. He is executed in the stadium days later, but his protest songs will continue to resound to this day, as does his defiance in singing, "Venceremos," We Will Overcome, in the stadium.
Pinochet will die at an advanced age without having answered for his crimes that were committed in an effort to crush dissent. But we celebrate the brave and defiant artists and activists like Victor Jara who help us to remember our humanity in the face of oppressive dictatorships.
About the author
BRUNO DOUCEY, born in 1961 in Jura, France, is a poet and a publisher of poets, and also a novelist and essayist. After having managed the Editions Seghers, in 2010 he created his own house which bears his name. He regularly devotes his pen to the fate of poets who are murdered.
RUTH DIVER has translated works by several of France's leading contemporary novelists, including
The Little Girl on the Ice Floe by Adélaïde Bon,
The Revolt by Clara Dupont-Monod, and
Arcadia by Emmanuelle Bayamack-Tam. Her translation of Maraudes by Sophie Pujas won the 2016 Asymptote Close Approximations Fiction Prize.
