Sábato, Ernesto

Sábato, Ernesto (ārnās`tō sä`bätō), 1911–, Argentinean novelist and literary critic, b. Rojas. He received his doctorate in physics (1937) and taught until removed for anti-Peronist activities in 1945. His novels, which include El túnel (1948; tr. The Outsider, 1950), Sobre héroes y tumbas (1962; tr. On Heroes and Tombs, 1981), and Abaddón, el exterminador (1974; tr. The Angel of Darkness, 1991), treat the inability of human beings to free themselves from psychological complexities. In 1984, Sábato wrote a scathing report on the "disappeared" victims of Argentina's military regime. His volumes of literary criticism include the collection The Writer in the Catastrophe of Our Time (1990).

Bibliography

See study by H. D. Oberhelman (1970).

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Sábato, Ernesto 

Born June 24, 1911, in Rojas, in Buenos Aires Province. Argentine writer.

Sábato was a physicist by training. His critical articles and philosophical essays began appearing in print in 1943. His books include One and the Universe (1945), Men and Gears (1951), and Heterodoxy (1953). His novel The Tunnel (1948) is a detailed recounting of a murder, told in the words of the murderer. The focus on decadent subjects is even stronger in the novel On Heroes and Graves (1961), in which Sábato uses a personal drama of a pathological nature to present a synthetic picture of Argentine life.

WORKS

El escritor y sus fantasmas. Buenos Aires, 1964.

REFERENCES

Terterian, I. “Istoriia i patologiia.” Inostrannaia literatura, 1966, no. 3.
Correa, M. A. Genio y figura de E. Sábato. Buenos Aires, 1971.
Neyra, J. E. Sábato. Buenos Aires, 1973.