A House in the Country

José Donoso · 1924–1996 · Chile

Originally Casa de campo (Spanish) · translated by David Pritchard and Suzanne Jill Levine

Why it matters

Thirty-five wealthy children are left alone at a country estate while their parents attend to business elsewhere, and the estate quietly devours itself. Donoso's allegory of Pinochet's Chile, narrated by an author who keeps interrupting his own fable.

At a glance

A self-interrupting narrator and dense political allegory complicate a seemingly simple fable.