海角大神

Thousands of Jewish refugees fled to Bolivia from Europe in the 1930s. In her novel 鈥淓xile Music,鈥� Jennifer Steil imagines a family of Austrian Jews arriving in La Paz. In an interview with Monitor contributor Randy Dotinga, Ms. Steil explains how she brought this unexpected setting to life.聽

Q:聽What sparked the idea for the novel?

In 2012, my family moved from London to La Paz so my husband could take a post as head of delegation for the European Union. He came home from a meeting and said, 鈥淒id you know there were more than 20,000 Jewish refugees living here during World War II? And that many of them were artists and musicians?鈥�

Soon after this, I met John Gelernter, who was born in La Paz after his parents fled Poland, where the rest of their family had been murdered. He told me his family鈥檚 story and introduced me to the few survivors who were still in La Paz.

Q:聽How did refugees end up in Bolivia?

Mauricio Hochschild, a German Jewish mining magnate who controlled most of Bolivia鈥檚 tin mines, is largely responsible for getting Jews into the country. He encouraged Bolivian President Germ谩n Busch to grant visas to Jewish refugees, insisting they could help build the Bolivian economy. At the time, Bolivians saw him as an exploitative mining baron. Many now refer to him as the Bolivian Schindler [of 鈥淪chindler鈥檚 List鈥漖.

Q:聽How did the world of the novel unfold?

I obsessively imagined what life must have been like for these refugees as my 4-year-old daughter was busy inventing a vivid imaginary world. It occurred to me that a Jewish child in Austria in the 1930s might have felt the necessity for a similar imaginary world as the menace of the real world became too much. Those two seeds 鈥� my husband鈥檚 meeting and my daughter鈥檚 world 鈥� eventually grew into 鈥淓xile Music.鈥�

Q:聽How do fugitive Nazis enter the picture?

Klaus Barbie, the Butcher of Lyon, makes an appearance. He fled to Bolivia to escape trial for war crimes. He worked for Bolivian Gen. Hugo Banzer 鈥� helping with the interrogation and torture of聽[reform-minded Bolivians], by some accounts 鈥� and was involved in arms trading. He lived quite freely in Bolivia until he was arrested by the new government in 1983 and extradited to France.聽

John Gelernter said that when he was young, he ran into Barbie in the streets of La Paz. When Barbie and his bodyguard overheard John talking about him, the guard came over and kicked and threatened John. I imagined how horrifying it must have been to think that you鈥檝e finally found safety, finally escaped the Nazis, only to run into them in your place of refuge.聽

In the book, I wanted to explore the ethical dilemmas 鈥� and trauma 鈥� that Jewish refugees might have faced when confronted with these men.聽

Q:聽What is the role of music in your book?

The father plays viola with the Vienna Philharmonic, and the mother is an opera singer. Music is how they communicate. The father finds other musicians to play with and is excited to discover Bolivian music. Orly [the young daughter and focus of the book] takes up a Bolivian instrument. But her mother is too devastated to sing. Her silence profoundly affects Orly.聽

Also, the structure of the novel underscores the way music scaffolds my characters鈥� lives. When I was fretting over how to best organize the story, I happened to be listening to Mahler鈥檚 Third Symphony, which has six movements. And suddenly I had a structure that made sense to me and made sense in the world of the novel.