Marvin de los Reyes : Sueño en llamas

The final presentation I would like to mention was different to the others I attended because it was about an issue I am pretty well informed on. Sueño en llamas is a book Marvin de los Reyes just wrote, covering the collective memory of the people of Guatemala of the burning of the Spanish embassy in Guatemala City in 1980. It was very interesting to have him as a speaker, learning the process he underwent in order to accomplish his novel. Through newspaper clips, readings of his own passages of the book, and the Q&A afterward we see how even today nobody knows how set the fire at the Embassy and that this issue has never really been treated in the literary form. He had to create a character that would appeal to both sides, so he chose a streetboy, who he could use as a migrant to the U.S. (just like him). This boy, then, could use his hybridity of being from Guatemala but living in the U.S. (like so many of us). Between the victims of his story, he created one to sort of guide, and take the journey with the boy to help him tell the story of the Embassy. One question that I came up with however, is if everyone who was at the Embassy died, how can the boy tell the story? It's definitely a book I would like to read, and see exactly how the author treated the whole subject.