The lawyer Nicolás Vial-Montero will present this Saturday, at 2:00 p.m., his book “Al, the alien who came to tell us something” in the society of writers of Chile (Admiral Simpson 7, Providencia).
The work of Éditions Unicité, “Poètes Francophones Planétaires” collection, tells the story of Al, an extraterrestrial that arrives on Earth to pronounce a speech destined to wake up awareness.
This book was born in the context of the pandemic “as a need for expression, an exhaust valve in front of the claustrophobia of the confinement,” explains its author to The counter.
“The story unfolds on an exterior and interior trip, in which the central character meets other creatures with which he shares concerns and questions, while investigating himself and travels through his own existential career. Written with abundant fantasy, humor and a marked poetic sense, these ingredients function as a remedy against adversity,” he says.
Means of communication
The work initially arises as a means of communication and an author’s need to communicate with his children during the pandemic.
“It is a story that I tell them and illustrious as long as we cannot see each other, a way to stay united and to poetically explore the themes and emotions that emerge in this unusual confinement period: a respite in front of the suffocation of isolation.”
He adds that although he is aimed at the youth public, his speech acquires the complexity of a political -social fable, with poetic essay nuances and autobiographical elements. The reader can be an adult, an “adult child” or an “adult -child,” says the author.
Diaspora metaphor
The book explores how the human being reacts when he is taken to the limit, raising reflections on his relationship with the planet, with himself and with his surroundings. Through a character – an alien – which symbolizes the trip, the exodus and the search, contemporary questions about the world in which we live and the existence and permanence of the status quo, in the words of the author are intertwined.
“Narrated from the perspective of an alien being – the foreigner, the other, the one who does not fit -, the work becomes a metaphor of the diaspora and the displacement. It is a personal and allegorical story that investigates the experience of confinement, asking questions about the world we inhabit, our relationships with him and the consequences of our actions,” he says.
“Al is an alien who undertakes a mission to come to planet Earth to give us a warning. It is an alien who has been a victim of interplanetary persecution and has found refuge on a distant planet but it is time to make a great mission, which is to come to the earth to give a warning speech in the Nife, center of the earth to all the creatures of the planet. a metaphor in Sim itself, as the story in its entirety. ”
Adventure tale
According to its author, the book is an adventure story, in the style of the adventures of traveling characters seeking the meaning of things.
The protagonist entails a relationship with other beings, which are animals, because humans seem immune to understanding their own history and the future of the earth. The plot revolves around Al, an interplanearily persecuted alien who finds refuge in a distant world. However, it is time to fulfill its great mission: travel to Earth to deliver a warning message. His destiny is the NIFE, the center of the planet, where he has to speak before all the creatures. His speech – like the full story – is a metaphor loaded with symbolism and reflection.
The purpose of the story is to invite the reader to a fantasy world and raise essential issues-as the subsistence of nature-and existential-“how we act with our environment”-in a playful and fabulant way, says road-montero.
“In it, an extraterrestrial traveler arrives at a land besieged by an alien dyes virus. This being offers us a message, advice or a warning that, deep down, acts as an antidote in front of the viruses and the consequences of the catastrophic performances of the human being on the planet. It is a pacifist and ecological story, narrated by an alien persecuted in other worlds that arrives to wake up.”
Upcoming projects
In addition to this book, Vial Montero is currently writing an autobiographical book, “El Barco”, which recounts his departure from Chile in 1975.
“The journey begins by crossing the Andes by train and continues aboard the transatlantic Augustus, from Argentina to Europe. History offers a vision of exile through the eyes of a child, where memory and imagination are intertwined. It also addresses the adaptation to life in a Spain that aroused democracy after Franco’s death, all seen from the naive perspective, sometimes distorted, sometimes distorted.
In addition, simultaneously, he is writing a play that goes into the world of the courts of first instance of southern London. With an ironic and humorous look that touches the absurd, explores the mistakes that arise in the tumultuous chaos of these courts: the lack of interpretation, the “loss in the translation” and the cultural shock – sometimes linguistic – among the characters. The plot presents real people who face the loss of their homes and cross with a Latin, picturesque and charismatic lawyer, who narrates in a visceral and comic way the entanglements of justice.
The protagonist is an ex officio lawyer specialized in evictions in the courts of southern London, where he attends to a diversity of people and families at risk of losing their homes. The work offers a radiography of poverty and precariousness in that area, exploring the fragility of the housing system and judicial bureaucracy through a look full of absurdities and cultural stereotypes that collide with each other, the author says.
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