This book is a good reference for understanding the history of Argentina in the late 60's and early 70's. Gillespie has studied the period and offers a fresh and objective view about subjects that are fertile territory for political manipulation.

the book was excelent! i loved how she told about her affair with Al and Henrique (oh baby). it was so romantic. i was jealous. i'm serious! then how she told about her friend 'Liz'. who was actually a spirit...not a real. living person. to tell you the truth i was a bit freaked out by it. but then when she said about that night in Mexico...her birthday and she drank tequilla. i mean i thought that was the COOLEST. go Clau! this book was GREAT! i mean i have read it about 16 times. yes...i am obsessed. you should buy it! teach it to people. read it on the street! now Nitz is here. sorry...ok so what's up?

I'm just not going to tell you then end ok! thanks, and bye.

Puig's _Tropical Night Falling_ offers an interesting psychological study of two elderly women living in Rio de Janeiro. What is most perceptive about the novel is the movement the characters demonstrate from profound naivete to a sad, but necessary cynicism of the world around them. As the characters meet and become involved with neighbors and other people near their apartment complex, they begin to understand the complex, bizarre, and often self-destructive relationships that human beings tend to have. Puig makes astute psychological observations and scores points by creating main characters who are in their eighties, certainly an under-represented group in contemporary fiction. The most difficult aspect of reading the novel is that it is presented solely through dialogue, letters, and newspaper articles. At some point, one begins to wonder if the novel would not have worked better as drama. However, _Tropical Night Falling_ is still a good read for anyone who has an interest in contemporary fiction with an emphasis on the psychological.

A visit to the ranquel indians(Una excursion a los indios ranqueles)is the most famous novel of the argentine "dandy" writer Lucio Mansilla.
Nephew of the ex dictator Rosas, Mansilla grew up as any other nobleman at his age. He used to be haughty, scorn the culture of the aboriginal as "barbarism" and" uncouth".
But his opinion changed completely after visiting the ranquel indians during a mission send by the federal government.His original motive was oblige the indians to concede the territory for the construcion of railroad, but while he lived along side the indians, he realized that the problems the indians have were mostly because of their povertry, and they are neither uncouth, imbecil and bellicose as the government described.
The indians were really brave, smart and loyal to the friendship.
Mansilla felt that himself was also converted to a inseparable part of the indian community. At the same time, he also know clearly that his mission was to destroy the indian's hacienda.
The today he complete his mission must also be the final of the peaceful life of these ingenuous poor people.
It was really a painful option for Mr Mansilla...

Words drop slowly, one after another, in long languid sentences. Reading WHAT THE NIGHT TELLS THE DAY is a bit like sitting at the knee of an old storyteller and listening carefully to his tale. Like all reminiscences, this one tends to drift a bit. Stories come out to startle the reader, and and then retreat, changing into something else - a philosophical discourse, perhaps. Yet, somehow, the slight unevenness in tone seems to make the book all the more authentic. Disconcerting for purists, the book's "identity" might annoy some readers. The cover declares it to be a novel, but the inside jacket tell us that the writer has turned from his usual fiction and has written a classical autobiography. The problem here may be that no one knows how to classify this beautiful tale. But the style is truly one of memoir; it is not long within the pages of this book that the reader forgets about the question of fiction vs. memoir and gets lost in the power of the writing. It no longer matters whether the words are near truth or disguised truth. One just feels the characters and, most importantly, the feeling. Bianciotti's strength is an almost pastoral sense of portraying the personal. He renders an interior life for an outside audience in a way not unlike a minister interpreting the Bible for his/her parishoners. The book shuld be read by anyone wanting to read prose of tremendous power and by readers interested in the entire emotional package of the homosexual experience, not necessarily the erotic. Bianciotti does all of this well, but not as well as Yukio Mishima who covered much the same material in his classic novel, CONFESSIONS OF A MASK. The two books have similarities, but Mishima's is far superior, and as well as allowing the reader inside of the mind of someone coming to terms with their sexuality, Mishima gives much more of a feeling of Japan than Bianciotti manages of Argentina. Still, WHAT THE NIGHT TELLS THE DAY is highly recommended.

This book by French author Jean Raspail follows his tradition of writing about small and disappearing civilizations. There's something magical about this people of extreme south Argentina (Cap Horn), who after milleniums of struggle against a difficult nature, succumb to western invasion. When you read this beautiful story, you end up wondering how many treasures and how many great civilizations died.

Soriano writes about the losers in ourselves, yet he does so with the most enlightening glance, a sweet'n' sour prose that keep you awake untill you reach "el fin" ("the end"). There is an ex-boxer-to-be in this novel, a tango singer who is no good enough to sing in the tango capital, cheap hotel rooms and uncomfortable trains. Soriano mixes all these ingredients in a well seasoned recipe which also includes an ironic picture of the Peronist Argentine in the 50's, and serves this delghtful dish on the barren (yet majestic in its solitude) patagonic landscape.

Argentina has of course, yielded some of the greatest novelists and short story writers of this century. Alexander-Imbert may be a lesser figure in that pantheon, and he is possibly too much of a hybrid to be considered an unambiguously Latin American writer (he spent much of his life teaching in United States universities) but for my money he is more sublime than, say Bioy-Casares and his stories never dissapoint.

Reviews of Bruce Chatwin's "In Patagonia" tend to gush emotionally about Chatwin's spare verse and quirky sketches of colorful characters. Others have claimed to have used his book as a guide while living in Patagonia. As much as Chatwin's now-famous travelogue offers pleasant reading, it still pales in comparison to other Patagonian travel books, including "Edward Chace, A Yankee in Patagonia." Chatwin also liberally hijacked ideas straight from previous authors, who made his journey and investigated the same people and subjects a full four or five decades before the publication of "In Patagonia." What's more, the locals down there (and a Ph.D candidate in Patagonia history I met on my journeys) hate Chatwin, claiming he was sloppy with his facts about their relatives. Chatwin's name in Patagonia is as popular as General Sherman's in Atlanta. So don't get overwhelmed by the Chatwin hype. Browse the Patagonian classics you'll find on most library shelves first, then reread this so-called masterpiece. Comparative shopping is worth the effort here.

In Patagonia is not only a great book, but it is also a great introduction to a brilliant author.
It was Bruce Chatwin's first published book. It recounts Chatwin's wide and varied travels in southern Chile and Argentina, known collectively as 'Patagonia'.
Chatwin's lively, stylish prose records the people and places that he saw on his six month tour of Patagonia. He colourfully describes the history, mythology and literary context of this strange place.
The book introduces the reader to some of Chatwin's most enduring literary themes: such as his fascination with a travelling or 'nomadic' lifestyle and his interest in the exotic and strange;
It sets the stage for later works such as The Viceroy of Ouidah and The Songlines.
My advice: READ IT!

This is a wonderful collection of tall tales, fiction, fact and bizarre anecdotes, loosely connected by their association with a sparsely populated part of South America. Unfortunately critics and publishers in their obsessive need to categorise books, called it a Travel Book. This was misleading, as are the claims that he reinvented travel writing or had some sort of unique insight into Patagonia, its people, history and landscape. Chatwin was primarily a storyteller, not a travel writer or an expert on Southern Argentina. His talent for the 5-6 page yarn is unparalleled in modern literature and this is as good as anything he wrote.

This biography is particularly deceiving as Mr. Barnes packages it wrapped in historical information, but then includes misinformation and gossip presenting it all as facts.

Though not quite as vicious as THE WOMAN WITH THE WHIP (the basis for the musical EVITA), and even sympathetic in parts, this book is still full of errors. The most notable error being the most often repeated by other biographers as well: the assertion that Evita organized a rally to free Juan Peron from prison and thereby usher him into the presidency of Argentina (this historical inaccuracy made its way into the Broadway musical, and eventually into the movie version). The rally that freed Peron from prison was organized by the unions, to which Evita, still an actress at the time, had no affiliation.

But I can understand why that myth is recounted here as fact: because it fits well into the author's over-all thesis that Evita was a power hungry woman who calculated her rise to the top. Whether she was power hungry or not, she did accumulate great power. But she did not, and could not have, really shaped any of the events that brought her to power (what brought Evita to power was her husband Juan Peron, and what brought Juan Peron to power was the situation caused by the embargos placed on Argentina by the United States; for further elaboration on this, I recommend Lawrence W. Levine's book INSIDE ARGENTINA FROM PERON TO MENEM). This author would have done better to have just described what 'was,' rather than trying to describe 'why' it was.

The difficulty in understanding Evita is that her life is so shrouded in myth. It's my opinion that a serious biographer would therefore steer clear of all "interpretations" of Evita (i.e., interpretations of her character and motivations), and focus on simply "hammering out" the basic details of her life (since they are in such great dispute, even 50 years after her death). Instead, the author of this book tried to portray her as something of a "romance novel heroine." The tone of the book is a little too stylized. The author even occasionally describes what Evita said to Peron behind closed doors when no one else was present, which is where it particularly takes on the tone of a romance novel because the dialogue is melodramatic. In addition, Peron and Evita never gave personal interviews regarding the private details of their relationship (this was the 1950s where people, especially politicians, were much less likely to talk about these things).

The best thing about this book is probably the collection of pictures, 16 pages in all (all black and white). And I don't mean that as an insult at all. This book actually contains some great reproductions.

I am very familiar with Latin American writers and read them in the Spanish. I read this book in Spanish even though it originally was in English! John Barnes is a very experienced journalist who was stationed in Bueonos Aires for various major publications. He has worked all over the world in places like Argentina, Chile. No. Ireland and covered the Iran Iraq was for Newsweek. With this background and talent he has crafted a facinating book about Eva Peron. It's true that there is a lot of politics but when you are first lady it goes with the territory. It's how she and Col. Peron transformed and revoluncionized Argentina just before the end of WW 11 that is so interesting. Evita left a little pueblo at 15 with no formal education, worked her way up to being a second rate actriz in their film industry. She fell in love with Col Peron many years her senior and took control of the country. It turnes out she was the brains and fierce driving spirit in the process who died at age 32. The major labor union petioned the Pope to have her cannonized a saint! I found this book by the pro John Barnes a real treat.