Frédéric DUGIER
A former head of an audiovisual production company where he worked as a sound engineer, and a songwriter and member of SACEM (the French Society of Authors, Composers and Music Publishers), Frédéric Dugier has contributed to the creation of numerous musical shows. Author and composer of over 100 songs for various artists, as well as musical tales, and producer of musicals, his passion for words naturally led him to writing. Following *De sable et d'eau* (Of Sand and Water), *Le violon du Pacifique* (The Violin of the Pacific) is his second novel, which won an award at the 2024 Arts et Lettres de France International Literary Competition. Frédéric Dugier, 63, lives and resides in Aix-en-Provence.
Nicolas Mazin, a renowned violin maker from Mirecourt, left for Valparaíso in September 1973 to deliver to his friend Diego the violin he had promised him years before. Leaving his family behind, he had no idea that he, along with Diego, Catalina, and Milovans, would remain imprisoned in Chilean jails for nearly fifteen years. Captured in a roundup at the very beginning of the "Golpe," the coup that saw the treacherous General Augusto Pinochet rule the country for two decades, they became among the famous disappeared of this bloody dictatorship, which caused the deaths of thousands. Marcel, a renowned bow maker, friend, and close collaborator of Nic in their celebrated violin-making business, and Joaquín, a Chilean music teacher, would spend years searching for their missing friends, finally finding them miraculously in a hospice in Montevideo after this interminable period of captivity. These fifteen years of purgatory in detention centers, including the infamous ship Esmeralda anchored in the port of Valparaíso, where torture and humiliation were the spice of their indigestible rations, have rendered them almost mute. Nic and Diego will attempt to rebuild their lives with difficulty, driven by the love of their families as much as by their respective passions: music for one, his artistic craft for the other. This book is the story of their resilience, of the corrosive questioning that wore down their loved ones during this long ordeal, and of the apprehension of a second life where the relationship to time is different. Publication date: November 4, 2024 Order Press release
