A short life of the author
Ernesto Sabato (1911–2011) was born on 24 June 1911 in Rojas, Buenos Aires Province. He studied physics at the National University of La Plata and worked at the Curie Institute in Paris before abandoning science for literature. He chaired Argentina’s National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (CONADEP), which documented the crimes of the military junta.
Life and Career
El túnel (The Tunnel, 1948) — a short, intense novel narrated by a painter who describes how and why he murdered a woman — was championed by Albert Camus and became one of the most widely read novels in the Spanish-speaking world. It is an existentialist thriller of remarkable compression and psychological acuity.
Sobre héroes y tumbas (On Heroes and Tombs, 1961) — a vast, sprawling novel about Buenos Aires, Argentine history, and a descent into madness — contains the famous “Report on the Blind,” a hallucinatory novella-within-a-novel. It is his most ambitious work.
Abaddón el exterminador (Abaddón the Exterminator, 1974) is a metafictional novel in which Sabato himself appears as a character.
Major Works and Themes
Sabato wrote about alienation, evil, the dark side of human nature, and Argentine identity. He won the Cervantes Prize in 1984.
Key Works
- The Tunnel (1948)
- On Heroes and Tombs (1961)
Collecting Sabato
Spanish originals (Editorial Sudamericana) are the primary collected form. English translations bring $15–$30. Sabato died in 2011 at the age of ninety-nine.