Palma, Rubén 1954-

views updated

Palma, Rubén 1954-

PERSONAL:

Born 1954, in Santiago, Chili; immigrated to Denmark, 1974.

ADDRESSES:

E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer. Danish Red Cross, 1983—

MEMBER:

Danish Author's Society.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Book of the Year Award, Foreword magazine, 2004, for The Trail We Leave.

WRITINGS:

Fra Lufthavn til lufthavn, Forlaget Hovedland (Hojbjerg, Denmark), 2001, translation by Alexander Taylor published as The Trail We Leave: Short Stories, Curbstone Press (Willimantic, CT), 2004.

Also author of Letter to Denmark (novel), 1989; Tricky Ghost (children's book), 1992; Meeting with Denmark (short stories), 1993; The Open Door (nonfiction), 1996; and The Land after Yesterday (poetry), 2005. Author of the plays To the Flesh—To the Heart, 1995, and The Trade. Contributor to newspapers, magazines and anthologies.

SIDELIGHTS:

Rubén Palma immigrated to Denmark from Chili during the Pinochet regime and began learning Danish at the age of twenty. He has since become a renowned Danish writer, writing in his adopted country and language. In an interview on the Curbstone Press Web site, Palma told Alexander Taylor about his decision to write in Danish instead of Spanish, noting: "The choice of language has a lot to do with this new understanding of my life in a no longer temporary, but permanent, Denmark. The necessity of going into exile made me become an immigrant. It was a kind of second arrival, and learning to write in Danish was a second way of discovering my host country and the mentality of its people."

The author of novels, plays, and short stories, Palma presents ten stories in his collection The Trail We Leave: Short Stories. Although the themes of the stories differ, they all contain political refugees who must live far from their homeland of Chili. For example, in his love story "Adam and Shaha," Palma relates the story of a Chilean exile who finds himself in love with both a Danish woman and another Chilean exile, leading him to wonder about betrayal and his love for the women, one who represents his past and the other his future. Rebecca Stuhr, writing in the Library Journal, noted that "these are ‘homely,’ simple stories that will resonate with readers of all different backgrounds and experiences." In a review in World Literature Today, Anna Patterson wrote: "Palma's is a calm and gentle voice, in an excitable debate about the traumas of migration and identity crises on a global scale." Michael Upchurch noted in the Seattle Times that "the book's best offerings are as moving and sharp-witted as anything else that's come my way this year."