Remaining Human

“The morning of September 11 was sunny and bright.” In 1973, on that fateful date, the Chilean government was violently overthrown in a military coup led by Augusto Pinochet, in the aftermath of which thousands of Chilean citizens were murdered, tortured and “disappeared.” In her debut novel, Retribution, Chilean-Canadian writer Carmen Rodríguez returns to that day, as well as to the years preceding and following, through the eyes of three very different Chilean women: a grandmother, a mother and a daughter. In so doing, she asks some timely questions: is it love or blood that makes a family, and are humans capable of responding to violence by seeking peaceful retribution, as opposed to violent revenge?

A political novel in many senses of the word, Retribution is Rodríguez’s third book, and was published in the same year as her daughter Carmen Aguirre’s award-winning memoir, also about politics and sexuality: Something Fierce. Rodríguez too...