As the Andes Disappeared by Caroline Dawson, translated by Anita Anand

Caroline Dawson opens her autobiographical novel, As the Andes Disappeared, with the declaration: “The first time I decided not to kill myself, I was seven years old.” What follows is an immigrant’s journey, from Chile as a child to an adult in Canada, tracing the changes in class, language, and belonging that her family undergoes. The novel, which was originally written in French, was translated by the writer Anita Anand, who reached out to Dawson to translate, as Dawson notes in the acknowledgements.

Told in a series of short chapters detailing different events in chronological order, Dawson explores her immigration experience as a refugee from Pinochet’s Chile and tries to pinpoint when her identity started to move away from Chile and more focused on Quebec. Some of these events are poignant and deep, others are the random things we remember despite lack of significance — a meal, an ordinary day, a class at school. I did find the flow a bit hard to read at times. Dawson’s chapters are short and very contained, lending the book a choppier flow.

Of interest to me from a categorizing perspective (or in my very specific case, a cataloguing librarian’s professional interest) is the decision by Dawson and/or the publisher to market As the Andes Disappeared as an autobiographical novel. This is such an interesting framing: it becomes a declaration that Dawson is aware that her story may not entirely be what she’s remembered or written. In this particular book, I don’t think there’s any intent to deceive — Dawson is much more concerned with exploring the transformative properties of immigration and what it means to be forced to reinvent yourself in a new language as a child — but it is an acknowledgement of the faultiness of memory. Regardless of whether or not each incident happened as Dawson wrote it, it has truth in it.

a rich record of a refugee experience

As the Andes Disappeared is a story about a journey with lyrical meditations and copious footnotes. Despite the book’s marketing as an autobiographical novel, Dawson and Anand are meticulous about translating Chilean Spanish, Montreal French, and era references throughout, providing the deeper context to the time Dawson was going through these experiences. What this creates is a rich record of a refugee experience, and the choices that reverberate through time, leading to unintended consequences.

Caroline Dawson was born in Chile in 1979 and immigrated to Quebec with her family when she was seven. As the Andes Disappeared, originally published in French as Là où je me terre (2020), was a finalist for various prizes, including the Prix des libraires du Quebec and Radio Canada’s Combat national des livres, and won the Prix littéraire des Collégiens and the Prix AIEQ. She is also the author of the poetry collection, Ce qui est tu (2023). Dawson teaches sociology and co-organizes the Montreal Youth Literature Festival. She lives in Montreal.

Anita Anand is an author, translator and language teacher from Montreal. She is the author of Swing in the House and Other Stories, which won the 2015 Concordia University First Book Prize and was shortlisted for the 2016 Relit Award for Fiction and the Montreal Literary Diversity Prize. Her novel, A Convergence of Solitudes, was nominated for the 2022 Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and the 2023 Forest of Reading Evergreen Award. Her previous translations include Nirliit by Juliana Léveillé-Trudel, which was nominated for the 2018 John Glassco Prize, and Lightness by Fanie Demeule.

Publisher: Book*hug Press (November 14, 2023)
Paperback 5.25″ x 8″ | 208 pages
ISBN: 9781771668613

Alison Manley

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Alison Manley has ricocheted between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia for most of her life. Now in Halifax, Nova Scotia, she is the Cataloguing and Metadata Librarian at Saint Mary's University. Her past life includes a long stint as a hospital librarian on the banks of the mighty Miramichi River. She has an honours BA in political science and English from St. Francis Xavier University, and a Master of Library and Information Studies from Dalhousie University. While she's adamant that her love of reading has nothing to do with her work, her ability to consume large amounts of information very quickly sure is helpful. She is often identified by her very red lipstick, and lives with her partner Brett and cat, Toasted Marshmallow.