The true power of Martinez���Ĵ�ý�s storytelling lies in is his ability to make his protagonist���Ĵ�ý�s personal struggle secondary to the oppression of the Dirty War���Ĵ�ý�he uses his artistic skill to enfold the reader not only into Emilia���Ĵ�ý�s story but into the time itself, whisking the audience through 30 years in the blink of an eye. In hopes of finding her husband, Emilia fruitlessly following a series of ultimately inaccurate clues pointing to Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, and finally the United States. The true angst in the story floods not from the pursuit itself but from the slow realization that these clues seem loosely linked to Emilia���Ĵ�ý�s own father: Dr. Dupuy, a propagandist for the oppressive government regime itself. The irony almost makes the narrative humorous���Ĵ�ý�Dupuy���Ĵ�ý�s ideals enforce the statement ���Ĵ�ý�God, family, country,���Ĵ�ý� but it seems increasingly clear to the audience and to Emilia that her father instigated Simon���Ĵ�ý�s disappearance, and possibly his torture and murder, in order to further his own agenda and to keep Emilia among others from discovering the truth behind the government���Ĵ�ý�s atrocities.

As the novel progresses, the reader begins to question what is real and what is invented���Ĵ�ý�both within the story and looking at the novel from a historical standpoint. There are some interesting parallels between Martinez himself and the author depicted in Purgatory who is relaying Emilia���Ĵ�ý�s story���Ĵ�ý�both are exiled writers from Argentina, and the character���Ĵ�ý�s books share titles and topics with those published with Martinez himself. The events surrounding Dr. Dupuy���Ĵ�ý�s villainous character are outlandish in a way that adds comic relief to the tense storyline in spite of being very serious and mirroring real-life events, which further blurs the line between truth and fiction. One moment he has Emilia move home to care for his ailing wife and the next he is sending his daughter reeling, which only perpetuates public rumors that she is insane, in search of her lost husband to get rid of her lest she learn too much about what is really happening in the government. Prior to his wife���Ĵ�ý�s death he traipses around publicly with a successful woman, and the moment his mistress���Ĵ�ý� reputation wanes, she is mysteriously found dead (supposedly by suicide). For some reason Dupuy is compelled to secretively obtain treatment for his wife���Ĵ�ý�s cancer. He forces a man to marry his favored daughter Chela and boosts his new son-in-law into riches for the sake of his daughter���Ĵ�ý�s wellbeing, but the moment his reputation is questioned, he arranges it so his daughter becomes one of the disappeared alongside her husband and forsakes his relationship with his daughter entirely. Although Dupuy���Ĵ�ý�s role seems very small at first, it gradually snowballs until the reader is struck by his importance not only in Emilia���Ĵ�ý�s love story, but in post-Dirty War Argentina.

One significant scene captures Dupuy bartering with Orson Welles, who receives a cameo in the book. Dr. Dupuy begs Welles to create a film in which Argentina is shown as a ���Ĵ�ý�peace-loving country���Ĵ�ý� where everyone is happy. This comes on the tails of a campaign in which two actors were sent across the country dressed as Mary and Joseph in something of a religious parody, trying to prove that the people would help and support them, but showing the exact opposite when most people not only rejected them but mocked and insulted them. Dupuy (who Welles refers to as Charlie) wants Welles to create an uproar, a national panic, that attributes the disappearances of many individuals to UFOs. Welles���Ĵ�ý�s response is not only a refusal���Ĵ�ý�it is a disclosure to the audience:

“Art is illusion, Charlie, reality is illusion. Things only exist when we see them; in fact, you might say they are created by your senses. But what happens when this thing that doesn���Ĵ�ý�t exist looks up and stares back at you? It ceases to be a something, it reveals its existence, rebels, it is a something with density, with intensity. You cannot make that someone disappear because you might disappear too. Human beings are not illusions, Charlie. They are stories, memories, we are God���Ĵ�ý�s imaginings just as God is our imagining. Erase a single point on that infinite line and you erase the whole line and we might all tumble into that black hole. Be careful, Charlie.”

With these words, Welles unveils the true nature of the disappearances and warns Dupuy that the government���Ĵ�ý�s tenuous grasp on power is further weakening, and that a propagandist campaign can only go so far to reinforce power. Argentina is on the verge of tumbling into that black hole of purgatory, just as Emilia and many others whose loved ones���Ĵ�ý� disappeared already have, existing on a false sense of hope and security when certainty is absent. By the time the reader has to fully consider the idea that Emilia has unexpectedly been reunited with her husband, who has not aged after 30 years, the unrealistic magical air of the novel (largely established by Dupuy���Ĵ�ý�s fantastical character) allows the reader again to question what is real and even permits events that are too fantastical to believe to waver on the edge of possibility���Ĵ�ý�the reader is bound to ask, ���Ĵ�ý�is it likely that Emilia has, in fact, found the ghost of her husband?���Ĵ�ý� While Emilia was characterized as the one who was crazy all along for not believing that her husband was dead when testimonies existed that proved otherwise, it seems feasible that those testimonies were also a creation intended to keep questioning at bay.

Overall, there is a beautifully created sense of horror that surfaces because, the more the reader knows about the corruption in the government, the less inclined he or she is to believe that Emilia, our protagonist, is insane in light of the insanity the government is attempting to hide. Overall, Tomas Eloy Martinez creates a historical thriller in which the characters and the audience alike must struggle to separate fact from fiction lest they get lost without a map in their own personal Purgatory.

Aleksandra did an independent study with me last semester to learn about writing book reviewing. She read a bunch of books, wrote and rewrote and rewrote her pieces, read all of the essays in the Words Without Borders “How to Review Translations” series, and became a much better writer and reviewer over the course of the semester. I meant to run her pieces throughout the semester, but classes (and ALTA and life and work and everything) kept me way too busy. So instead, I’ll run them every Friday for the next few weeks.

This is from the first review she ever wrote:

Emilia Dupuy is haunted by the memory of her missing husband, Simon Cardoso. During what seemed like a routine mapping expedition in Argentina for the couple (both of whom were cartographers), Simon vanished without a trace. A thread of hope is preserved in Emilia thirty years after his disappearance in spite of testimonies stating that he was detained, tortured, and murdered. Simon became one of the many ���Ĵ�ý�disappeared���Ĵ�ý� that characterized Argentina in the wake of the Dirty War, and Emilia became one of the individuals left behind in her own personal purgatory, marked by uncertainty with regards not only to the whereabouts of her husband, but the direction of her own life and her place within her family. Tomas Eloy Martinez carefully constructs this tale of one woman���Ĵ�ý�s struggle in Purgatory by mingling poignant emotion with gut-wrenching fact and allows the reader to effortlessly move between present-time New Jersey into the corrupt Argentina of yester-year characterized by propaganda-induced authority.

The true power of Martinez���Ĵ�ý�s storytelling lies in is his ability to make his protagonist���Ĵ�ý�s personal struggle secondary to the oppression of the Dirty War���Ĵ�ý�he uses his artistic skill to enfold the reader not only into Emilia���Ĵ�ý�s story but into the time itself, whisking the audience through 30 years in the blink of an eye. In hopes of finding her husband, Emilia fruitlessly following a series of ultimately inaccurate clues pointing to Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, and finally the United States. The true angst in the story floods not from the pursuit itself but from the slow realization that these clues seem loosely linked to Emilia���Ĵ�ý�s own father: Dr. Dupuy, a propagandist for the oppressive government regime itself. The irony almost makes the narrative humorous���Ĵ�ý�Dupuy���Ĵ�ý�s ideals enforce the statement ���Ĵ�ý�God, family, country,���Ĵ�ý� but it seems increasingly clear to the audience and to Emilia that her father instigated Simon���Ĵ�ý�s disappearance, and possibly his torture and murder, in order to further his own agenda and to keep Emilia among others from discovering the truth behind the government���Ĵ�ý�s atrocities.

Click here to read the full review.

Click here for all past and future posts in this series.

by Tomás Eloy Martínez, translated by Frank Wynne

Language: Spanish
Country: Argentina
Publisher: Bloomsbury

Why This Book Should Win: In part because Martínez died just a couple years ago, and has never gotten the recognition here that he deserves.

Today’s post is by Tom Flynn, bookseller and events coordinator at in Chicago.

There���Ĵ�ý�s a fair bit I can say about Tomás Eloy Martínez���Ĵ�ý�s Purgatory. It is a political novel, a study of madness, a ghost story, a meditation on a rich culture that has spawned disastrously violent regimes: it is in many ways a culmination of Martinez���Ĵ�ý�s life���Ĵ�ý�s work. But I spend most of my time these days selling people books in twenty second blurbs that have to hook them on the spot, so a long explication of Purgatory_���Ĵ�ý�s strengths isn���Ĵ�ý�t really up my alley. So let���Ĵ�ý�s start over and try this: _Purgatory is a startlingly addictive character study focusing on a woman���Ĵ�ý�s search for her husband against the backdrop of a country gone mad.

OK, that probably needs a bit more explanation.

Briefly, Purgatory is the story of Emilia Dupuy and her search for her husband, Simon, who disappeared not long after their marriage. More accurately, Simon is disappeared by the Argentine junta during the military���Ĵ�ý�s rule in the late 1970s and early ’80s. After spending decades chasing phantoms of him—despite eyewitness testimony and the reality of life under the junta, Emilia refuses to accept that Simon is dead—she settles in New Jersey to await Simon���Ĵ�ý�s return. The novel begins thirty years after Simon���Ĵ�ý�s disappearance in a chain restaurant where, looking up from her booth, Emilia sees Simon sitting just a few feet away and he hasn���Ĵ�ý�t aged a day since she saw him last.

The events of the junta���Ĵ�ý�s reign are well documented; the history is laid out. But Martínez takes those events and the ways in which an insane political system attempted to remake an entire nation and creates a beautifully personal history in Emilia���Ĵ�ý�s life following her husband���Ĵ�ý�s disappearance. The novel skips about in time, addressing the events of the day and Emilia���Ĵ�ý�s place in them almost thematically, building her personality and the circumstances that bring her to the novel���Ĵ�ý�s opening lines.

What Martínez achieves is a triumph of memory over historical events. By presenting Emilia���Ĵ�ý�s history as a chaotic overlapping of occurrences he allows the personal perspective to take precedence over the factual occurrence. The carefully demarcated line of causation that explains the grand historical movement of peoples and countries from one moment to the next is cast aside in favor of the fragments, the coral that each individual generates. In unmooring this period of history Martinez brings its profound effects into starker relief. And by creating Emilia he makes the pain and misery forced upon his native country a more personal reality for the reader.

I might need to pare that down a bit to get it under twenty seconds.