Books.org participates in affiliate programs including Bookshop.org and the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. We may earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this page, at no additional cost to you.
Overview
Widely acclaimed throughout Latin America after its 1992 release in Argentina, The Absent City takes the form of a futuristic detective novel. In the end, however, it is a meditation on the nature of totalitarian regimes, on the transition to democracy after the end of such regimes, and on the power of language to create and define reality. Ricardo Piglia combines his trademark avant-garde aesthetics with astute cultural and political insights into Argentina’s history and contemporary condition in this conceptually daring and entertaining work.The novel follows Junior, a reporter for a daily Buenos Aires newspaper, as he attempts to locate a secret machine that contains the mind and the memory of a woman named Elena. While Elena produces stories that reflect on actual events in Argentina, the police are seeking her destruction because of the revelations of atrocities that she—the machine—is disseminating through texts and taped recordings. The book thus portrays the race to recover the history and memory of a city and a country where history has largely been obliterated by political repression. Its narratives—all part of a detective story, all part of something more—multiply as they intersect with each other, like the streets and avenues of Buenos Aires itself.
The second of Piglia’s novels to be translated by Duke University Press—the first was Artifical Respiration—this book continues the author’s quest to portray the abuses and atrocities that characterize dictatorships as well as the difficulties associated with making the transition to democracy. Translated and with an introduction by Sergio Waisman, it includes a new afterword by the author. About the Translator:
Ricardo Piglia lives in Argentina and is the author of eight Spanish-language books, two of which have been previously translated into English: Artificial Respiration, also published by Duke University Press, and Assumed Name. His other books have been translated into Portuguese, French, Italian, and German. Piglia’s fiction has won the Casa de las Americas Prize and the Boris Vian Prize.
Sergio Gabriel Waisman is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of California at Berkeley. His previous translations include Piglia’s Nombre falso (Assumed Name), which received the Meritorious Achievement Award in the 1995 Eugene M. Kayden National Translation Contest
Synopsis
English translation of 1992 best-selling fiction novel that explores the nature of totalitarian regimes and life in the aftermath of a long dictatorship.
Kirkus
The first English translation of Argentinian novelist Ricardo Piglia's The Absent City is "a masterpiece".
Editorials
Kirkus
The first English translation of Argentinian novelist Ricardo Piglia's The Absent City is "a masterpiece".Ilan Stavans
Artificial Respiration is intellectually explosive, artistically refreshing and aesthetically ambitious. . . . Not since Julio Cortazar’s Hopscotch has a book from south of the border offered such [a] shocking reassessment of Hispanic history and collective identity.—Ilan Stavans, The Nation
Publishers Weekly
This futuristic and fragmented detective novel blurs the lines between fact and fiction as it meanders through the life and mind of Junior, a reporter at a daily newspaper in Buenos Aires. Aided by Fuyita, a Korean gangster, and a scarred but beautiful woman named Julia, Junior is investigating a machine that contains the memory and mind of Elena, who is based on the real-life wife of Argentine writer Macedonio Fern ndez. Using different stylistic voices, Elena is telling stories. The state police, who fear her revelations about official atrocities against the Argentinean people, are also tracking her down and hope to deactivate her. The metaphoric, disembodied voice of Elena weaves through the overlapping narratives that support the novel and drive it forward, allowing for linguistic critiques and evocations of Argentina's troubled past, particularly the Dirty War, when "everyday life went on in the middle of the horror." Throughout the book, language itself is a protagonist, with long, quasi-academic passages describing the instability and transience of verbal communication. References to Argentine writer/politicians and James Joyce may prove puzzling to some readers. With its intriguing but demanding phrasing and images that confuse and entice, the novel at times requires detective work to solve its hermetic riddles. Though sometimes rarefied, this slim volume is pleasurable and rewarding. (Dec.) FYI: The Absent City has been performed as an opera in Argentina. Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.Library Journal
Piglia's political mystery is steeped in Argentina's history and culture, making reference to Borges, Eva Peron, and Nazis-in-hiding. The story focuses on Junior, the son of English immigrants, who follows clues surrounding a machine that holds the soul of his beloved Elena, since deceased. As Junior begins his search for the truth, he drifts through time and space, in and out of dreams, from one literary reference to another. The characters whom Junior meets during his crusade relate perceptions of their own lives and give small clues regarding Elena. At the same time, the reader learns what Elena thinks about being trapped in a machine. Complex plot structure and intense metaphors may make some readers uneasy, but those used to the Borges tradition of mixing the real and the unreal will appreciate Piglia's style. The translator includes an informative foreword, and the author himself provides an afterword, which explains the novel's meaning. Recommended for all academic and larger public libraries.--Lee McQueen, Univ. at Buffalo Lib., NY Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.From the Publisher
“A truly striking and innovative novel written by one of Latin America’s most highly regarded novelists. Piglia brings into play a swirl of tales mixing dark truths with hallucinatory adventures.”— Gwen Kirkpatrick, author of The Dissonant Legacy of Modernismo“Piglia is Argentina’s most important novelist, a compelling writer and committed intellectual who relentlessly deals with the complicated relationships between politics and fiction. And Sergio Waisman is an exceptionally gifted translator with a wonderful ear and eye for the reverberations of Spanish in English. The Absent City is a book for our times, one that transcends national boundaries.”—Francine Masiello, author of Between Civilization and Barbarism: Women, Nation, and Literary Culture in Modern Argentina
“Though clearly walking in the riverbank footsteps of the whimsical Macedonio and the noir geniuses Arlt and Onetti, Piglia is a genuine original, gifted with a fluid imagination that rushes past traditional narrative boundaries. The Absent City is a kind of mock thriller that lures its reader on, not with the question, ‘What happens next?’ but with ‘What was it that just happened?’ ”—Robert Coover