So, Neruda not only convinced the government, he also went to Paris, raised the money, bought a cargo ship that was somewhat dilapidated, transformed it in a passenger’s ship and transported 2,000 people that he even selected through two oceans. The narrative, the anti-immigration rhetoric in 1939 Chile, was exactly the same as the one we are seeing right now in the United States. In Chile, the right wing and the Catholic Church opposed their coming because they were all leftists, many of them atheists, known for allegedly burning churches and raping nuns. Neruda followed the Spanish Civil War closely because he loved Spain, he had friends among the intellectuals and the artists of Republican Spain, and when the drama of half a million refugees at the frontier with France erupted, he convinced the Chilean government to let him bring immigrants to Chile, Spaniards who were in concentration camps in France. Did you want to honor him in some way with this novel?ĪLLENDE: It was impossible not to honor him, because all the Winnipeg odyssey was the workmanship of Neruda.
Unfortunately, he did not live to see you become an author. You have said that Neruda advised you to quit journalism and pursue literature. In an interview with The Associated Press in New York, Allende spoke enthusiastically about her life, her work, her childhood in Chile and her own unconventional loves.ĪP: “A Long Petal of the Sea” presents what Neruda did to save 2,000 Spanish refugees in the Winnipeg to a new generation.
Unconventional love, in this case: After losing her husband, a pregnant Roser is forced to marry her brother-in-law, Victor, in order to board the Winnipeg and survive.
The previous ones were “The Japanese Lover” and “In the Midst of Winter.”Īnd love, as in all her work, is very present. It is the third consecutive novel about refugees, displacement and migration by Allende - herself an eternal migrant who was born in Perú, raised in Chile and lived in exile in Venezuela before settling down in California about 30 years ago. The book’s title comes from Neruda’s poem “Cuándo de Chile”: “Oh, Chile, long petal of sea and wine and snow.” The writer places them among the 2,000 refugees aboard the real-life SS Winnipeg, an old cargo ship arranged by the poet Pablo Neruda to bring Spanish exiles to Chile. It follows Victor and Roser, a couple fleeing the Spanish Civil War who endure repeated uprooting and upheavals over the course of their lives.
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