On Heroes and Tombs (Ernesto Sabato)

On Heroes and Tombs is a massive book, not because it's almost 500 pages long, but because in 479 pages Sabato covers so much. 

Argentinian writer Ernesto Sabato wrote three major novels over the span of his career. His first novel El Túnel (The Tunnel) was published in 1948. On Heroes and Tombs, his second novel (published originally in Spanish as Sobre héroes y tumbas) appeared in 1961, but wasn't translated into English until 1981. It appears that no new English printings have been produced since the 1980s.

As I said, Sabato covers a lot in this novel.

We are confronted, immediately, in the Forward with the news that a woman named Alejandra has killed her father and taken her own life. The Foreword, which takes the form of an excerpt from a police report, mentions a "Report on the Blind" and casts doubt on the murder/suicide being "an act of madness."

In Part One at first,on the surface, things seem simple. It is a story about a young man (Martin) who meets an unusual young woman (Alejandra) and falls in love with her. Events subtly take a turn towards the strange as we learn more and more about Alejandra and experience her unusual and concerning behaviour. She is prone to drastic mood swings and feels that she is one the edge of something cataclysmic

Just when we think we've got a grasp on the tone and style of the book, we reach Part Three: Report on the Blind, which drastically shifts the tone and rocks our perception of what we believed the book to be.

Part Three of this novel could almost be a novel on its own. It's a mysterious, baffling, amusing and somewhat chilling story of conspiracy in which we must constantly question the reliability of the narrator. At times it seems surreal. Yet, it is completely essential to the novel as a whole. It, in all its strangeness, provides the explanation for so many events within the other portions of the novel.

In the midst of this complexly crafted story, Sabato also manages to comment on Argentinian national literature,and political and historical events in a seamless way.