15 Diario del Juicio: the testimony given at the 1985 Trial of the Juntas/Juicio a las Juntas, collected daily and published in newspaper form as El Diario del Juicio (‘The Newspaper of the Trial’) by Editorial Perfil, currently republished online at http://eldiariodeljuicio.perfil.com.
16 a book by Donald Rayfield: Stalin and His Hangmen: The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him (Random House, 2005).
17 the annoying gaggle of women: the ‘Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo’ who for years campaigned about Argentina’s disappearance.
18 ‘Hail Mary, most pure’: Ave María purísima is said in the confessional to the priest and is the equivalent of ‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned’; the priest’s response being ‘sin pecado concebida’.
19 José María Muñoz, the commentator for the 1978 World Cup.
20 Horangel: famous Argentine astrologer.
21 ‘Hear, mortals, the sacred cry!’: the first line of the national anthem.
22 Carmona: a character in Martínez’s novel La mano del amo (1983).
23 ‘La hermanita perdida’ (‘Little Lost Sister’): a poem (later a song) about the Malvinas/Falklands War.
24 Señor Ga: a character in Macedonio Fernández’s very short fable, ‘Un paciente en disminución’.
25 The house on the corner. : these lines are from a poem by Juan Gelman, ‘La casa de la esquina ya no es un río ni llora’.
A Note on the Author
Tomás Eloy Martínez was born in Argentina in 1934. During the military dictatorship (1976–82), 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. But it was his later books, including The Perón Novel, Santa Evita and The Tango Singer, that made his international reputation. In 2005 he was shortlisted for the International Man Booker Prize, and until his death in January 2010 he was a professor and director of the Latin American Program at Rutgers University.
A Note on the Translator
Frank Wynne has won three major prizes for his translations: the 2002 IMPAC for Atomised by Michel Houellebecq, the 2005 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize for Windows on the World by Frédéric Beigbeder, and the 2008 Scott Moncrieff Prize for Holiday in a Coma by the same author. He is also the translator of many other books, including An Unfinished Business by Boualem Sansal and Kamchatka by Miguel Figueras, which was shortlisted for the 2011 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.