“How Do You Remember Thirst?” with Nona Fernández

What happens if a generation forgets to overcome trauma? Can subsequent generations rewrite memory? Chilean writer Nona Fernández has dedicated much of her work to historical memory and how to recover it through fiction and flee paralysing victimisation.

Aware of the risk involved in the act of forgetting and the imposition of an official history, Nona Fernández asserts, in this dramatized reading, the power of literature to recognise the plethora of voices that remain hidden under the rubble of a conflict. This reading investigates the silence of the coup d’etat in Chile and its consequence on collective memory. For Fernández, history is not clear-cut. Nothing is plain but collectively rethinking it allows us to alter the horrors that may emerge in the future.