Like its author, the narrator of Julián Fuks’ Resistance is Brazilian, of Argentinian descent. The narrator’s parents were opponents of Argentina’s military dictatorship in the 1970s, and had to flee. In the present, the protagonist travels to Buenos Aires, trying to piece together his family’s story. But so much is beyond his reach. For example, in one chapter he describes the evening his parents held a dinner party where no one came, because their friends knew how dangerous it would be to gather together. Fuks’ protagonist realises that he simply cannot grasp what it was like to live in those circumstances:

I can’t conceive of a suppression of the self being exploited to the maximum, the systematic destruction of the void that is the self, its transformation into an object of torture. I cannot imagine, and this is why my words become more abstract the unspeakable circumstances in which staying silent is not a betrayal, in which staying silent is a resistance, the most absolute evidence of commitment and friendship. Staying silent in order to save the other: stay silent and be destroyed.
(translation from the Portuguese by Daniel Hahn)

Ideas of resistance run through the book: people resisting oppression, of course, but also history resisting comprehension, or reality resisting being captured in language. But the narrator does what he can, because he feels that he must – that he owes it to his family, and himself.

Book details

Resistance (2015) by Julián Fuks, tr. Daniel Hahn (2018), Charco Press, 154 pages, paperback.