The Unending Journey is a novel about exile, which chronicles five decades of Chilean and Canadian history. The main character, Marcos Morales, is a supporter of the progressive policies of President Salvador Allende. After the 1973 coup d’état by General Augusto Pinochet against Allende, Marcos decides to leave Chile for Canada. His wife Gabriela and young daughter Loreto accompany him. In Montreal, he slowly rebuilds his professional life but is plagued by the guilt of not staying in Chile to resist the dictatorship. Together with other Chilean exiles, Marcos and his wife experience in different ways nostalgia for their homeland, political discussions, integration into the new society and questions about national identity. These differences erode their relationship. Their personal story reflects the problems of many who, on changing countries, find themselves confronted with different situations and influences, without always being able to foresee their final destiny.
Spanish version |
José Del Pozo was born in 1943 in Viña del Mar, Chile. He arrived in Canada in 1974 to escape the repression of the Pinochet dictatorship. He earned a doctorate in history from the University of Montreal and taught for forty years at the Université du Quebec à Montreal, where he continues to be an associate professor. He has published a dozen books, two of them based on the testimonies of other Chileans in Montreal, Rebels, Reformers and Revolutionaries (1992) and Les Chiliens au Québec: Immigrants et réfugiés, de 1955 à nos jours (2009). His Historia de América latina y del Caribe (2002) has been translated into French and Portuguese. In 2013 he combined history and fiction by publishing Benjamín, una vida del siglo XIX, a novelized biography of a character in Chilean history, Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna. The Unending Journey (El Viaje Interminable) is his first work of contemporary fiction.
Ian Thomas Shaw is a Canadian novelist, translator and diplomat. The Unending Journey is his first translation from Spanish into English. He is the author of two novels, Quill of the Dove (Guernica Editions 2019) and Soldier, Lily, Peace and Pearls (Deux Voiliers Publishing 2012). Shaw was born in Vancouver, has lived for many years in Africa, the Middle East and Europe, and currently lives in Aylmer, Quebec