A Long Petal of the Sea

By Isabel Allende

I did not know about the poet Pablo Neruda, that he chartered a ship to carry over 2000 refugees from Spain to Chile during the Spanish Civil War. I have only recently been introduced to his poetry. He was, in my mind, a dissident poet; that was all. I was surprised to read about his grand gesture in response to the suffering around him.

There is a chilling similarity between the discourse Allende depicts during the challenge of welcoming refugees in the early twentieth century, and the rhetoric now streaming through contemporary media. In an AP News interview, Allende says,

In Chile, the right wing and the Catholic Church opposed their coming because they were all leftists, many of them atheists, known for allegedly burning churches and raping nuns. ... The narrative, the anti-immigration rhetoric in 1939 Chile, was exactly the same as the one we are seeing right now in the United States. So, Neruda not only convinced the government, he also went to Paris, raised the money, bought a cargo ship that was somewhat dilapidated, transformed it in a passenger’s ship and transported 2,000 people.

I was not surprised by the similarities. But I found it especially difficult to imagine someone operating in such a generous way on behalf of refugees. So as I read the book I paid special attention, not only to the narrative story, but also to Neruda’s poems, which opened each chapter of the book. Here’s a sample.

Get ready, lads,

To kill again, to die once more

And to cover the blood with flowers

-Pablo Neruda, from “Bloody was all the earth of man” The Sea and The Bells

I read the book with today’s refugees in mind. I was struck by the contrasting stories of a refugee couple, strangers in a strange land, and the established family of that country desperate to maintain their world of privilege. An age old story, it seems.

But I especially enjoyed the way Allende wove her fictional story with historical accounts of this tumultuous era in Chile’s history, and her own personal experience. The event which took place shortly before she was born, affected her family as they befriended refugee families. This was not just a historical story for Allende, but also deeply personal. She referenced her own godfather, Salvador Allende, who served as the 28th president of Chile. And, as only novels can do, she offered her own truths about the ways war, politics and oppression play out in the daily lives of a country’s citizens and refugees.

It’s a book about a foregone era and at the same time it is a book about today.