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Must-read classic books set in prison

The Tunnel

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Framed as the confession of a tormented outcast who has murdered the only woman capable of understanding him, Ernesto Sabato's The Tunnel has been acclaimed as a masterpiece by writers such as Albert Camus and Graham Greene. This Penguin Classics edition is translated by Margaret Sayers Peden with an introduction by Colm Tóibín. 
 
Infamous for the murder of Maria Iribarne, the artist Juan Pablo Castel is now writing a detailed account of his relationship with the victim from his prison cell: obsessed from the first moment he saw her examining one of his paintings, Castel had become fixated on her over the next months and fantasized over how they might meet again. When he happened upon her one day, a relationship was formed which swiftly convinced him of their mutual love. But Castel's growing paranoia would lead him to destroy the one thing he truly cared about... 
 
Ernesto Sabato (1911-2011) was born in Rojas, a small town in Buenos Aires Province. He read physics at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, attended the Sorbonne in Paris, and worked at the Curie Institute. After World War II, he lost faith in science and began writing fiction. 
 
If you enjoyed The Tunnel, you might like Albert Camus' The Outsider, also available in Penguin Modern Classics. 
 
'Sabato captures the intensity of passions run into uncharted passages where love promises not tranquillity, but danger' 
Los Angeles Times 
 
'An existentialist classic ... Retains a chilling, memorable power' 
The New York Times Book Review

'An existentialist classic ... Retains a chilling, memorable power'

'Sabato captures the intensity of passions run into uncharted passages where love promises not tranquillity, but danger'

Heralded by Albert Camus and Thomas Mann and widely translated, ''The Tunnel'' is the brief, obsessive, sometimes delirious confession of a convicted murderer.

Ernesto Sabato (b. June 24, 1911) was born in Rojas, a small town in Buenos Aires Province. He read physics at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, attended the Sorbonne in Paris, and worked at the Curie Institute. After World War II, he lost faith in science and began writing fiction.

Infamous for the murder of Maria Iribarne, the artist Juan Pablo Castel is now writing a detailed account of his relationship with the victim from his prison cell: obsessed from the first moment he saw her examining one of his paintings, Castel had become fixated on her over the next months and fantasized over how they might meet again. When he happened upon her one day, a relationship was formed which swiftly convinced him of their mutual love. But Castel's growing paranoia would lead him to destroy the one thing he truly cared about... 
 
Sabato's first novel El Túnel (translated as 'The Outsider' or 'The Tunnel'), written in 1948, is framed as the confession of the painter Juan Pablo Castel, who has murdered the only woman capable of understanding him. Sabato's novels were praised by authors such as Albert Camus and Graham Greene.

Ernesto Sabato

Helen Lane

A book with some claim to be the first major set-piece in that carnival of fictional fireworks which mesmerized Latin America throughout the next decade. It offers a rich motherlode of imagery, language and haunting scenes

A novelist of immense power ... uncompromising and original

Sabato's dark, philosophical novel is woven around a violent crime committed by Alejandra, the daughter of a prominent Argentinian family. Alejandra's act entwines the lives of three men: her father, Fernanda Vidal, a man who believes himself hunted by a secret organization of the blind, her troubled lover, Martin and Bruno, a writer who loved her mother. Exploring the tumult of Buenos Aires in the 1950s, On Heroes and Tombs leads its reader into a world of passion, philosophy and paranoia.

Ernesto Sabato

Praise for On Heroes and Tombs

A book with some claim to be the first major set-piece in that carnival of fictional fireworks which mesmerized Latin America throughout the next decade. It offers a rich motherlode of imagery, language and haunting ...

Bewitched, baroque, monumental

A novelist of immense power ... uncompromising and original

A book with some claim to be the first major set-piece in that carnival of fictional fireworks which mesmerized Latin America throughout the next decade. It offers a rich motherlode of imagery, language and haunting ...

Bewitched, baroque, monumental

A novelist of immense power ... uncompromising and original

A book with some claim to be the first major set-piece in that carnival of fictional fireworks which mesmerized Latin America throughout the next decade. It offers a rich motherlode of imagery, language and haunting ...

Bewitched, baroque, monumental

A novelist of immense power ... uncompromising and original

Books by Ernesto Sabato

Articles featuring Ernesto Sabato

Must-read classic books set in prison

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