Kamchatka

309 pp. Translated into English from the original Spanish by Frank Wynne. Set against the backdrop of Argentina's violent military junta in the late 1970s, Kamchatka is a wise, deeply moving drama about broken loyalties and the imaginative spaces we retreat to when we need to make sense of an unimaginable world. In 1976 Buenos Aires, a ten-year-old boy lives in a world of school lessons and comic books, TV shows, and games of Risk - a world in which men have superpowers and boys can conquer the globe on a rectangle of cardboard. But in his hometown, the military has just seized power, and amid a climate of increasing terror and intimidation, people begin to disappear without a trace. When his mother unexpectedly pulls him and his younger brother from school, she tells him they're going on an impromptu family trip. But he soon realizes that this will be no ordinary holiday: his parents are known supporters of the opposition, and they are going into hiding. Holed up in a safe house in the remote hills outside the city, the family assumes new identities. The boy names himself Harry after his hero Houdini, and as tensions rise and the uncertain world around him descends into chaos, he spends his days of exile learning the secrets of escape.