Singapore, Jan. 21 -- In 1939, an old cargo ship, the SS Winnipeg, docked in Valparaiso, Chile. On board were 2,200 refugees of the Spanish Civil War who had made the perilous crossing into France, where they were detained in internment camps.
Upon learning of their plight, Chilean poet Pablo Neruda organised an expedition to transport the Spanish refugees to his country to start new lives.
Of the night the Winnipeg set sail, he wrote: "Critics may erase all of my poetry if they wish/But this poem, that I recall today, cannot be erased by anyone."
The voyage of the Winnipeg is remembered in A Long Petal Of The Sea, the latest novel by Isabel Allende, one of Latin America's best-known female writers.
Allende, 77, is all too familiar ...