The author of El Yanqui and Leaving the Land offers a poignant tale of suppression and intrigue as an American journalist returns to Argentina to help the victimized family he befriended as an exchange student.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
In a season that will also see the publication of Lawrence Thornton's Naming the Spirits, here is another understated yet powerful novel that focuses on Argentina's fascist military dictatorship (1976-1983), under which thousands were arrested, tortured, kidnapped or murdered by right-wing death squads. Fifteen years ago, American citizen Diego lived with an Argentine family as an exchange student. In the mid-1980s, he has returned to Argentina's fragile democracy to investigate the disappearance of two of the family's three sons, both members of the underground resistance; the third son has also returned, from exile in Paris. Through the Benevento family's personal tragedy, the enormity of the junta's crimes unfolds. Both Mama and Papa were arrested illegally and spent months in detention camps; their house was later burned to the ground by paramilitary goons. The story line oscillates between Diego's detective-like inquiry into the disappearance of Alejo and Miguel Benevento, both murdered by the government, and his reportage on the trial of Argentina's former military leaders, at which Papa reveals details of his sons' torture and execution. Unger's (The Turkey War) writing is low-keyed yet taut; through Diego, he serves as witness and conscience, fashioning an eloquent testament against human-rights abuses. Where Naming the Spirits (Forecasts, May 29) uses magical realism to convey this period of Argentine history, Unger takes pains to realistically describe the minutiae of daily life and the specific circumstances of the regime's reign of terror. Reading both books is a moving experience.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
American journalist Diego returns to Argentina to visit the Benevento family, with whom he had once lived as an exchange student?a tale chronicled in El Yanqui (LJ 11/1/86). He finds his family torn apart: the formerly wealthy parents now live in a small apartment, two of their sons were "disappeared" during the military dictatorship, and their oldest son has recently returned from exile in Paris. Of consuming interest to Diego and his family is the ongoing trial of the former military dictators on charges of human rights abuses, which will include testimony about the death of the Beneventos' youngest son. While Unger succeeds in conveying the horror of this time in Argentina's history and his outrage at the lack of world attention to the genocide, this potentially compelling novel is so weighed down with facts and figures that it leaves out any sense of drama or personal involvement. Recommended for larger collections or where El Yanqui was popular.?Patricia Ross, Westerville P.L., Ohio
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A novel of witness to the plight of 'the disappeared.',
By A Customer
This review is from: Voices from Silence (Hardcover)
Voices From Silence is a kind of sequel to Unger's El Yanqui, set some 15 years later. In that time, Argentina has suffered under an oppressive regime & is now trying to heal itself. But scars remain, and Unger's American protagonist has returned to Argentina to help the family that once adopted him as a son search for the 2 sons who have disappeared. Thus Voices From Silence deals with the macrocosm of the Argentine political tragedy through the microcosm of one family's story. But Unger does not resort to cheap theatrics in this novel. This is a scrupulously realistic account that is all the more dramatic because it resists melodrama. The horrors in Voices From Silence are all too real, and as the truths emerge through the efforts of the Benevento family to discover what happened to their lost sons, the insiduous & mundane quality of those horrors (each the result of a thousand minor failings that in themselves could never amount to much) makes them all the more troubling to witness. But Unger's novel is unflinching, and we are forced to witness acts & consequences more damaging than any melodramatic cataclysm. In this sense, Voices From Silence joins the ranks of Heart of Darkness and the works of Elie Wiesel in portraying how ordinary lives can be trapped by the very ordinary nature of oppression. Art is meant to affirm life, and Voices From Silence, by giving witness to the silenced, bravely affirms the lost value of the disappeared lives of anyone who has fallen victim to an oppression born of their fellow citizens
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