On Heroes and Tombs

On Heroes and Tombs

Summary

'A novelist of immense power ... uncompromising and original' Colm Tóibín

'I can feel the passage of time, as though it were coursing through my veins, along with my blood...'

One June day in 1955 Alejandra, last of a noble yet decaying Argentinian dynasty, shoots her father, locks herself up with his body, and sets fire to them both. What caused this act of insanity? Does the answer lie with Martín, her troubled lover, Bruno, the writer who worshipped her mother, or with her father Fernando himself, demonic creator of the strange 'Report on the Blind'? Their lives entwine in Ernesto Sabato's dark epic of passion, philosophy and paranoia in Buenos Aires.

'Bewitched, baroque, monumental' Newsweek

Reviews

  • 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
    Salman Rushdie

About the author

Ernesto Sabato

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