Cvičebnice – Zambra Alejandro (2023)

The workbook is a genre-defying experimental text, a play in the style of Oulipo, Perec's lists, or Cortázar's reading in jumps, yet it carries a significant critical message about the state of Chilean society and education at the end of the last millennium. The title of the original (Facsímil) can also mean an exact imitation or copy; in Chile, it is also the name of a booklet of sample tests that students use to practice the types of questions they will find in their final high school exam, which further determines which university they can apply to. Zambra humorously and ironically comments on pressing issues in Chilean society while simultaneously breaking traditional genres. He fills the structure of actual didactic tests with his own exercises, variations, micro-stories, and jokes, which the reader completes through questions and proposed five answer options. Besides light, absurd, and dark humor, the leitmotif of the book is the dire situation of the young generation, unprepared for real life, expressed in the words: 'They didn't teach you; they trained you.'