On Heroes and Tombs

Nineteen-year-old Martín Castillo is a boy from Buenos Aires trying to find his path in life. He meets and falls in love with Alejandra Vidal Olmos who with her father Fernando represents the “old”, colonial and autochthonous Argentina, which is seen mutating amid a strange and unsettling “new” world. The novel gives an evocative portrait of the city of Buenos Aires and its people.
This work, filled with dark and emotional imagery, is considered by many to be Sabato’s magnum opus, and the section Informe sobre ciegos (“Report on the Blind”), about Fernando’s distorted obsession with, and fear of, the blind, is a haunting, nightmarish contribution to Latin American literature.