Ramón Molinares’ novel, Exiled in Lille, takes place in the city of Lille –situated in Northern France- where the author spent two years of his life.
 
The Novel presents two worlds in conflict: groups of Chilean workers who left their country of origin to escape the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, take refuge in the foggy city of Lille and remain there for several years without papers or passports, without any possibility of being assimilated into the French milieu, and without any hope of returning to their “remote, lost country”.
The bitterness experienced by these workers _ as well as the nostalgia for a friendly immense joy felt by their children, who at times, treat them with contempt.
 
Those children, who have been educated in the French School system and who speak French without a foreign accent, make fun of the clumsy pronunciation of their parents and in their imagination, they replace the heroic figure of Bernardo O’Higgins for that of Napoleon Bonaparte.
 
Translated from the Spanish by: Janice Flavien