An extraordinary, moving autobiography: Orlando Mardones grew up in 1946 in a very poor family in southern Chile. As a young construction worker, in the 1960s he joined the Communist Party. He experiences in a large company the progress and conflicts of the Allende government era. After the military coup of 1973 he is arrested, mistreated and detained for three years. He later manages to do odd jobs in the towns of Santiago de Chile. In 1978 he came as a political refugee to Europe.

Author

Orlando Mardones was born in a small town, Panguipulli, Valdivia province, Chile, in 1946. From a very young age he worked, which prevented him from continuing higher education. Later, in the mid-1960s, he went to work as a construction worker at the state-owned company ENDESA. He was active in the union and in the Communist Party. In 1973, the year of the coup that overthrew President Salvador Allende, he was arrested, tortured and remained in different concentration camps until 1976. In 1978 he arrived in Germany where he requested political asylum. In the following years he worked as a metal worker, later in his own Latin American restaurant. He currently lives in Berlin.