Why a Booktrail?
1970s- The story of Argentina’s missing’ the ‘ desaparacidos’ is a black stain on its past – but what happens when a man tries to investigate it. Does he risk becoming one of the statistics?
The Buenos Aires Quintet
What you need to know before your trail
The Argentine army’s “Dirty War” has seen more than 30,000 people going missing, never to be found. Pepe Carvalho doesn’t want to get involved even though one person to have gone missing is his own cousin. Living in Barcelona, he moves to Buenos Aires and starts looking into his cousin’s past.
But “Buenos Aires is a beautiful city hell-bent on self-destruction,” and soon Pepe finds himself on a trail involving boxers and scholars, military torturers, Borges fans and cold-blooded murderers.
He will have to face the trauma of Argentina’s past if he is to solve the cousin’s disappearance and find out what exactly happened.
Travel Guide
With a title alluding to its musical and dancing heritage, this however is the story behind Argentina’s past, its dirty past and its dirty secret.
The military dictatorship of the 1970s, of the 30,000 “disappeared,” is recreated here giving a realistic, raw and graphic picture of just what the dictatorship at the time was like. How people coped, who went missing and why, and how people survived if they could.
Pepe’s search for his cousin Raul is complicated and often surreal. The mission takes him far and wide into the underbelly of the city and to some dark and shadowy corners. What does he know of the city? On arrival, his reply-
“Tango, Maradona, the disappeared,”
but the reality is more tragic –
“Those of us who survived and go on believing in the same ideals are even more disappeared than those who did disappear”
In contrast – the tango
This is the Buenos Aires where life sometimes went on as normal despite the war. The tango for example was not one to fade into the background being the country’s heart and soul. In the book, the real and famous tango singer “Adriana Varela” performs all of the songs in the novel: “Whither is fled the visionary gleam? Where is it now , the glory and the dream?”
Borges
For fans of Borges, a well known Argentinian author, there are plenty mentions surreal and otherwise of this man and his life there. His quotes help build a picture of the country of the time –
“To my mind, its just a tale that Buenos Aires began one day. I see her as eternal as water and air”
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