Word: batos
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...HEROES AND TOMBS by Ernesto Sábato; Godine; 479 pages...
First published in Argentina in 1961, this long novel had to wait nearly 20 years for a suitable English translation (by Helen R. Lane) and a willing U.S. publisher. In the meantime, Sobre Héroes y Tumbas confirmed Ernesto Sábato's home-grown reputation as one of South America's leading writers and, when translations began spreading, brought him world-class praise. It is good that English-speaking readers can finally join this celebration and sad that they must come so late. Some of the novel's topicality has dimmed over the years; memories...
...bato, now 70, used the trappings of public life in Buenos Aires in the mid-'50s to examine the phenomenon of suffering, a subject immune to passing time or fashions. Argentine life provides surface chaos. An attempt to overthrow Perón brings bombs raining down on a city plaza; Peronists retaliate by sacking and burning Roman Catholic churches. Beneath all this noise, the novel circles slowly around an internal mystery, announced at the outset: a woman named Alejandra murders a man named Fernando and then sets the scene of the crime on fire, immolating herself. The event draws...