The World I Inhabit

Southern Patagonia

The sea is memory, refuge and limit.

Tkáme belongs to a world where silence also speaks, where the body learns before words and each journey requires listening to the water, the wind and what others do not see. But violence breaks through the channels and alters the destiny of its people. Patagonia is a vast region at the southern end of South America, shared today by Chile and Argentina. Its far south brings together channels, fjords, islands, forests, and steppes. The Kawésqar and Yagán are distinct Indigenous peoples with maritime traditions, while the Aónikenk are historically associated with the continental steppes. The novel approaches parts of these worlds through fiction; it does not claim to replace the voices of these peoples or their own cultural sources. For readers in the English-speaking world, Patagonia lies at the far southern end of the Americas; it is neither an imaginary wilderness nor a culturally empty landscape. The novel asks what it means to inhabit a world rather than merely possess it. Sea, navigation, embodied memory, and displacement become ways of thinking about belonging. The Spanish edition is available now; the English edition will be available in December 2026.

While Tkáme tries to return to what was taken from him, Pilko must discover who he is between land and sea. Years later, on a remote island, Vincent Ellsworth keeps a story that still breathes under the fog.