Sábato, Ernesto [key], 1911–2011, 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. Sábato headed a commission that investigated the crimes committed by Argentina's military regime and that produced a scathing report (1984) on its tortured and “disappeared” victims. His volumes of literary criticism include the collection The Writer in the Catastrophe of Our Time (1990).
See study by H. D. Oberhelman (1970).
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