Like Ardiente Paciencia, Zambra’s novel starts off with a young man (Gonzalo) in pursuit of a young woman (Carla) from a more prosperous background and neighborhood.

In 2020 the forty-five-year-old Chilean Alejandro Zambra, one of the most brilliant Latin American writers of his generation, published the novel Poeta chileno, now superbly translated into English by Megan McDowell. Despite this bitter ending, Skármeta affirms that the bond between the exalted poet and the ordinary man is a lasting one, that the dream of social and artistic empowerment of the Allende years will persist beyond defeat and dictatorship. Neruda dies in late September 1973, almost two weeks after a coup overthrows the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende, and Mario is arrested and becomes one of the desaparecidos-the disappeared. Though Neruda gets the Nobel Prize and Mario gets the girl, the story does not end well for either of them, or for Chile. Neruda, who has risen from the ranks of the poor thanks to his mastery of language, will coax those beguiling words from the tongue-tied young man. In the late 1960s, in a remote seaside village in Chile, the revered poet Pablo Neruda is waiting to hear if he has won the Nobel Prize, while Mario, the postman who might bring that news, has troubles of his own: he is unable to find the right words to win the heart of Beatriz, a dazzling young woman of a higher social status. In 1985 the forty-five-year-old exiled Chilean Antonio Skármeta, one of the most brilliant Latin American writers of his generation, published the novel Ardiente Paciencia, which nine years later Michael Radford made into the film Il Postino.

Ways of Going Home by Alejandro Zambra