Summary

In the first chapter of “Fatherland”, entitled “Fatherland”, the first person narrator, Rigoberto Belano, describes his father. His father was a boxing champion who the police attempted to recruit. He was disinterested in joining the police force and, when he retired from boxing, opened a soda fountain.

In “The Family Idiot”, Rigoberto attends a party and is asked to recite a poem. While he is not unaccustomed to reading in front of crowds his “voice [shakes and] as [he] gesticulate[s], [his] hands shake” (118). During his recitation of Nicanor Parra’s poem, two men run into the room and announce, “that a military coup [is] underway in Santiago” (118). The narrator is knocked to the floor and passes out. When he awakes, his head is resting in the arms of a young girl who insists that they leave...