The Suicides
-
- $15.99
-
- $15.99
Publisher Description
A reporter embarks on an investigation of a string of unconnected suicides—which then leads into an exploration of the phenomenon of suicide itself—in this elegant existential novel, the third and final volume of Antonio Di Benedetto’s Trilogy of Expectation.
A stymied reporter in his early thirties embarks on an investigation of three unconnected suicides. All he has to go on are photos of the faces of the dead. Other suicides begin to proliferate, while a colleague in the archives sends him historical justifications of self-murder by thinkers of all sorts: Diogenes, David Hume, Emile Durkheim, Margaret Mead. His investigation becomes an obsession, and he finds himself ever more attracted to its subject as it proceeds.
The Suicides is the third volume of Antonio Di Benedetto’s Trilogy of Expectation, a touchstone for Roberto Bolaño and deemed “one of the culminating moments of twentieth-century fiction” by Juan José Saer. Following Zama (set during the eighteenth century) and The Silentiary (set during the 1950s), this final work takes place in a provincial city in the late 1960s, as Argentina plummets toward the “Dirty War.”
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Originally published in 1969, this captivating sequel to The Silentiary from Argentine author Di Benedetto (1922–1986) completes a loosely connected trilogy, each volume of which is focused on a man facing an existential crisis. The unnamed narrator, a 32-year-old newspaper reporter, receives an assignment to write about suicide. It turns out the narrator's father killed himself when the narrator was a boy, and as he pieces together the stories behind two recent suicides with photographer Marcela, he remembers his father, who died at 33 ("I had never thought about it seriously but as I began approaching that age, the memory came back to me more vividly"). A womanizer, the narrator withholds his emotions from the women he sleeps with, first a teacher and then Marcela. He's not a good guy—the paper's research assistant Bibi calls him "unpleasant"—but there's an undeniable appeal to his sardonic wit (he nicknames Bibi "Card Catalogue" for "her unfailing and perfectly ordered memory"). The novel's success lies in the author's light touch with weighty themes, which he layers into the narrative with snippets of philosophical writing on suicide from Confucius, Nietzsche, and others. This is brilliant.
