Word: batos
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Dates: during 1981-1981
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FICTION: Dad, William Wharton Ellis Island & Other Stories, Mark Helprin ∙The Hotel New Hampshire, John Irving On Heroes and Tombs, Ernesto Sábato ∙Riddley Walker, Russell Hoban ∙The Testament, Elie Wiesel ∙Zuckerman Unbound, Philip Roth...
...Heroes and Tombs, Ernesto Sàbato...
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...
...bato interrupts this narrative, just before the murder, with a long and astounding digression, written by Fernando in anticipation of the death that he knows awaits...