This book might be called "Roman-a-clef," because through the book, a person gets to see a snapshot of a wide spectrum of political and cultural moments, a remembrance of a moment in history that had a particular quality about it that the author felt was ineffable and worthy of remembering. The ineffable quality is most clear in the symbolic moments of the narrative, like when the narrator is put in prison, literally positioned as a martyr of the government's waxing insecurity and instability.
While in jail, the narrator meets important people. It seems he is in good company. There is one moment that stands out; a man called Carlos Wieder who is secretly Ruiz-Tagle. That man is a plane poet, and the symbol is worthy of exploring. For instance, notice that the political slogans that the plane pilot writes in the sky are literally "up." They are upward poetry, literally written in the sky so that if people want to see the truth of the poetry, they must look toward the heavens.
That is the ineffable quality being expressed poetically. The feeling of resistance in the days before the coup d'etat are like struggling to find the words to capture the frustration, and then looking toward the sky and finding the words written in the clouds. That is to say, the instability of the nation is a tragic fate where the sins of a few lead to broad fractures in the culture. This makes people needy for hope, because their whole lives are at risk. The jail is a symbol for the seriousness of the government corruption.
