Under the roof of a modest hostel in a poor neighborhood in the Chilean capital, a strange group of guests meets, including workers, trade unionists, students, traffic police, and performance artists. Let them all witness the last days of the rule of the Popular Union headed by Salvador Allende, before the bloody coup led by General Pinochet took place and changed the history of Chile forever. Thus, this hostel turns into something similar to an operations room through which some Chilean leftists try to protect the socialist government and stand up to fascism. And among all of them, Arturo, the braggart and virginal football player, coming from the south to the capital, and burdened with dreams of fame and unsatisfied desires, tries to discover himself and determine his position on everything that is happening around him.
“I Dreamed That the Snow Was Burning” is the first novel by Chilean writer Antonio Scarmeta, and one of his most important works. In it, the features of a special, diverse style are established in terms of rhythms and narrative techniques, in which imagination blends with reality, and in which sarcastic humor alleviates the harshness of dramatic events. The book is a living document of the dialogues, conflicts, and popular mood that prevailed in Chile at the most pivotal moments in its history.
When Jack got off the train carrying his certificate from the Teacher Training Institute, his father boarded the same train and disappeared.
Haunted by his father's abandonment of him, he spends his day teaching in his small village in the morning, and befriending the village miller in the evening, trying to find out from him the secret of his father's disappearance.
The miller encourages him to participate in an adventure that takes him out of his small world and into the brothel of the neighboring city, and his favorite student tries to share this secret journey with him.
With a young man searching for his father, a teenager searching for the journey of adulthood, and the complex young relationships of the residents of a small village, Scarmita takes us on a sweet journey of loss, maturity and forgiveness.
