Publisher's Synopsis
A novel from Argentina (where publication was halted for many years) about the life and career of a torturer
The torturer has no name, but we come to know him well as he plies his craft from episode to episode. He serves his apprenticeship with the devotion of the professional. Victim after victim is strapped down before him as he perfects his vocation. They fade away as he moves upward in the hierarchy of his bizarre career. So many questions lie behind, as posed by Elvira Orphée: "How can torturers have a family? Is it possible that they love their own children and intensely hate the children of others? Do they feel the suffering they induce and watch? Is it possible for them to imagine themselves in the place of their victims?"
Elvira Orphée seems concerned with commentary about her native Argentina, but she is most interested in the universal notion of torture. This novel, her fifth and initially published in Spanish in her sister country of Venezuela, is a special contribution to our understanding of a sorrowful human condition. It finally appeared in Argentina in November 1984, seven years after its first publication.
