This novella packs a strong punch in an incredibly short 70 pages. I picked it up at work because it was so small and I’ve been trying to read more translated fiction, this was translated from Spanish by Natasha Wimmer!

Space Invaders begins being told from the perspective of children, in letters to each other, recounted memories, and dreams, all surrounding their long lost friend, Estrella. As the book progresses, the memories are being pieced together by the characters growing up and their understanding of the situation they were in. What once seemed to them like the fantastical video game they grew up playing is now the harsh reality of their lives in a dictatorship.

Going into this story after reading the blurb, I knew very little about the Pinochet regime in Chile and did some surface-level research so I could have some semblance of understanding what the context of this setting was. This was such a heartbreaking, raw way to portray the history. The juxtaposition of the children’s perspectives and the eventual, fast paced discovery of what really happened is so effective. I’m very glad I read this and will be on the lookout for some more English translations from Nona Fernández! (It seems like at least two of her other works were translated by the same translator as Space Invaders! And she’s an actor as well as a playwright!)