Hablemos, escritoras. Switch to our version in English

When My Body Ceased to Be Your Home

Emma Sepúlveda · Hablemos, escritoras, Literal Publishing · 2025 · 256 pp

Novela · Traducción · Violencia

The book When My Body Ceased to Be Your Home: Ilse’s Memories from Colonia Dignidad, by Emma Sepúlveda, is a novel based on real events that recounts the experience of Ilse, a woman who lived as a prisoner in the infamous Colonia Dignidad, a German settlement in Chile founded by Paul Schäfer. The work describes the brutality, abuse, misogyny, and complicity with Pinochet’s dictatorship that defined this enclave. Narrated in the first person, the book reveals Ilse’s life amid terror and repression, showing the struggle for dignity and women’s resistance in a context of extreme oppression. The novel is presented as fiction grounded in reality, allowing the reader to understand the physical and emotional degradation suffered by the women trapped in this place, as well as their attempts to escape and reclaim their freedom.