La Moneda, 11 de septiembre

La Moneda, September 11 is, above all, a collection of testimonies. Four characters: a waiter, a policeman, a recruit and a fireman tell us how they lived and what they did that morning of September 11, 1973 - the day when the Chilean Army decided, following an attempt in June, to depose, the Popular Unity government, presided over by Salvador Allende, with any violence necessary. The four stories - in the form of answers to hypothetical and absent questions - revolve, like that coup d'état, around the presidential palace of La Moneda; one of the characters is even inside while the other three are in the vicinity. By means of this device, the author manages to make the reader relive, almost minute by minute, what happened that morning at the end of the southern winter in Santiago de Chile, with such clarity and accuracy that the book becomes a unique work.