The Peron Novel - by Tomas Eloy Martinez (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

"One of the most original and entertaining books to come out of Latin America in recent years."--Mario Vargas Llosa

On June 20, 1973, General Juan Peron, the most revered--as well as the most hated--dictator in the history of Argentina, returned to his homeland after eighteen years of exile. His arrival was the occasion for a fratricidal massacre. Less than a year later, Peron was dead. The throngs that filed past his body as it lay in state were as vast and impassioned as those that had mourned his wife, Evita, the music hall performer Peron had turned into Argentina's secular saint and who embalmed corpse he had turned into his personal talisman.

Out of the facts of this enigmatic despot's life, the Argentine journalist and novelist Tomas Eloy Martinez has created a novel who fantasy only heightens its humanity. For in The Peron Novel the mask of history is lifted to reveal a tragically hollow man who was a born follower until the moment he found himself transformed into a leader. The result is a tour de force, the most audacious and compelling meditation on absolute power since Gabriel Garcia Marquez's The Autumn of the Patriarch.

"A brilliant image of national psychosis. Vividly written."--The New York Times Book Review

About the Author

Tomas Eloy Martinez was born in 1934 in Argentina. During the military dictatorship, he lived in exile in Venezuela where he wrote his first three books, all of which were republished in Argentina in 1983, in the first months of democracy. During a fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for International Scholars, Martinez wrote The Peron Novel, which was published in 1988. He died in 2010.