Space Invaders is a dreamlike evocation of a generation that grew up in the shadow of a dictatorship in 1980s Chile. It tells the story of a group of childhood friends who, in adulthood, are preoccupied by uneasy memories and visions of their classmate, Estrella Gonzlez Jepsen. In their dreams, they catch glimpses of Estrella's braids, hear echoes of her voice, and read old letters that eventually, mysteriously, stopped arriving.

They recall regimented school assemblies, nationalistic class performances, and a trip to the beach. Soon it becomes clear that Estrella's father was a ranking government officer implicated in the violent crimes of the Pinochet regime, and the question of what became of her after she left school haunts her erstwhile friends. Growing up, these friendsfrom her pen pal, Maldonado, to her crush, Riquelmewere old enough to sense the danger and tension that surrounded them, but were powerless in the face of it.

They could control only the stories they told one another and the "ghostly green bullets" they fired in the video game they played obsessively. Nona Fernández, one of the leading Latin American writers of her generation, effortlessly builds a choral and constantly shifting image of young life in the waning years of the dictatorship. In her short but intricately layered novel, she summons the collective memory of a generation, rescuing felt truth from the oblivion of official history.

Animal Farm is a brilliant political satire and a powerful and affecting story of revolutions and idealism, power, and corruption. 'All animals are equal. But some animals are more equal than others.' Mr. Jones of Manor Farm is so lazy and drunken that one day he forgets to feed his livestock. The ensuing rebellion under the leadership of the pigs Napoleon and Snowball leads to the animals taking over the farm.

Vowing to eliminate the terrible inequities of the farmyard, the renamed Animal Farm is organised to benefit all who walk on four legs. But as time passes, the ideals of the rebellion are corrupted, then forgotten. And something new and unexpected emerges—a razor-edged fairy tale for grown-ups that records the evolution from revolution against tyranny to a totalitarianism just as terrible.

When Animal Farm was first published, Stalinist Russia was seen as its target. Today it is devastatingly clear that wherever and whenever freedom is attacked, under whatever banner, the cutting clarity and savage comedy of George Orwell's masterpiece have a meaning and message still ferociously fresh.