His generation are "war correspondents, tourists" or – and here the metafiction kicks in – "secondary characters" in this retold narrative about life in the Maipú province of Greater Santiago in the 1980s. "The novel belongs to our parents," he says, understanding that his childhood experience of terrorism was vicarious, diluted by his infancy. Ways of Going Home, Zambra's third novel, is both a literary and meta-literary foray into Chile's troubled past by a writer who lived during the Pinochet regime but who doesn't consider himself one of its primary victims. Until, that is, the new generation of Chilean writers, to which Alejandro Zambra belongs. Novels about this phase in Chile's history have been similarly unforthcoming. Could this reflect Chile's reticent national temperament? Hungover from a violent past, Chileans have remained a quieter breed than the stereotypical Latin American and conversations about the former dictator continued to be conducted largely in the private sphere for years after his 1990 departure. I nternationally acclaimed Chilean writing about the Pinochet regime has been relatively elusive, with the obvious exception of Isabel Allende.
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