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Home > Translation > The World Bookshelf > Books > The Adventure of the Busts of Eva Perón

The Adventure of the Busts of Eva Perón

1975. The cusp of Argentina’s Dirty War. Magnate Fausto Tamerlán has been kidnapped by guerrillas whose ransom demands stipulate the placement of a bust of Eva Perón in all ninety-two offices of his construction company. Ernesto Marroné is tasked with installing them, but his is a mission for executives of a heroic disposition; a modern knight, he must penetrate the ultimate Argentinian mystery: that maid of myth and legend known as Evita. He plunges into a world of occupied factories, urban guerrillas, Buenos Aires slums and the utopian Evita City, where his leadership skills (acquired from managerial bibles How to Win Friends and Influence People and Don Quixote: The Executive-Errant) are put to the test.

Marroné is a man both ahead of and behind his time: an ’80s yuppie fighting his way through the revolutionary ’70s, a ’70s would-be rebel caught in the corporate rat-race and the lethargy of suburban life. A stand-alone work but also a prequel to his first novel, The Islands (And Other Stories, 2012), Carlos Gamerro’s caustic and utterly original tale is a shattered window onto the dog days of a century we cannot yet shake off.

Author

Carlos Gamerro

Carlos Gamerro

Books

The Adventure of the Busts of Eva Perón

Carlos Gamerro is one of the best-known and most highly-regarded contemporary Argentine writers. Born in Buenos Aires in 1962, he has published six works of fiction, including the novels The Islands (And Other Stories, 2012 UK and 2014 North American publication) and An Open Secret (Pushkin Press). And Other Stories will publish The Adventure of the Busts of Eva Perón in 2015. He adapted The Islands for a major theatrical production in 2011 and writes influential works of criticism. In addition Gamerro, who was brought up bilingually in English and Spanish, has translated Shakespeare, Auden, and Harold Bloom.

Translator

Ian Barnett

Ian Barnett

Books

The Adventure of the Busts of Eva Perón

Ian Barnett has lived in Buenos Aires since 1991, translating and promoting many Argentinian and other South American writers. He collaborates closely with Carlos Gamerro and has already translated Gamerro’s novels The Islands and An Open Secret. Reviews of The Islands often made a point of praising his inventive, athletic ‘feat of translation’ (the Observer). Barnett was chosen by the Argentinian government to translate an anthology of ‘disappeared’ authors, presented at the 2010 Frankfurt Book Fair, where Argentina was the Guest of Honour.

Published by

And Other Stories, 2014
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1975. The cusp of Argentina’s Dirty War. Magnate Fausto Tamerlán has been kidnapped by guerrillas whose ransom demands stipulate the placement of a bust of Eva Perón in all ninety-two offices of his construction company. Ernesto Marroné is tasked with installing them, but his is a mission for executives of a heroic disposition; a modern knight, he must penetrate the ultimate Argentinian mystery: that maid of myth and legend known as Evita. He plunges into a world of occupied factories, urban guerrillas, Buenos Aires slums and the utopian Evita City, where his leadership skills (acquired from managerial bibles How to Win Friends and Influence People and Don Quixote: The Executive-Errant) are put to the test.

Marroné is a man both ahead of and behind his time: an ’80s yuppie fighting his way through the revolutionary ’70s, a ’70s would-be rebel caught in the corporate rat-race and the lethargy of suburban life. A stand-alone work but also a prequel to his first novel, The Islands (And Other Stories, 2012), Carlos Gamerro’s caustic and utterly original tale is a shattered window onto the dog days of a century we cannot yet shake off.

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