Recommended Books

A wealth of books has been written on Buenos Aires, both by Argentines and foreigners fascinated by the city.

Collected Fictions (Penguin Books, 1999), the translated short stories of Jorge Luis Borges, is a great way to start learning about the city. Borges is Argentina's most important literary figure, and he is immortalized by statues throughout Buenos Aires and a street named after him in Palermo. Many of his most important stories deal with the tumultuous 1920s and 1930s, depicting a dark underworld of gangsters, known as compadritos, their battles for women and turf, and betrayal by men they thought were friends. His stories are, in essence, literary tangos, dealing with the same subjects as the famous songs but in prose. Borges can be tedious to get through but will throw an interesting light on the country's underworld during its golden years of cultural and economic growth.

Santa Evita (Vintage, 1996), by Tomas Eloy Martínez, is a highly controversial book, released around the time of the Madonna movie. A beautiful blend of fiction and fact, it tells the ordeal of the preserved corpse of Evita as it made its way around the world. It also sheds light on the military commanders who, afraid of the Catholic Church, refused to destroy her body, but still went around murdering her followers -- all the while with an odd fear of and sexual attraction to her lifeless body.

A more biographical account is Evita: The Real Life of Eva Perón (W. W. Norton & Company, 1996), by Nicholas Fraser and Marysa Navarro. While there seem to be many truths to Evita, this work remains close to most recognized accounts of her life that appear in other history books and biographies. Still, there is an obvious love behind the work, and the book dismisses the idea of the young Eva's serial sexual relationships with powerful men.

The Story of the Night (Henry Holt, 1997), by Colm Toibin, an Irishman, is a novel whose main character is Richard Garay, an Argentine with an English mother. It offers a wonderful perspective to English speakers of the Islas Malvinas/Falkland Islands War and what it was like to be a potential political enemy during this time. Garay is later hired by the U.S. government as a translator and, essentially, a spy. He communicates with members of the U.S. government about the goings-on after the war, the beginnings of President Ménem's rise to power, and the privatization of many of Argentina's industries, as well as the thoughts of the country's wealthy ruling class from one regime to another. All this political intrigue also serves as the backdrop to the character's coming out as a gay man, eventually dying of AIDS.

Imagining Argentina, by Lawrence Thornton (Bantam Books, 1988), takes place during Argentina's Dirty War of 1976 to 1982 under the military dictatorship that came into power after Juan Perón's second presidential regime. During this time, perhaps 30,000 Argentines accused of conspiring against the government were tortured and killed. The main character returns home one day to find out that his wife has been taken captive by the government. He never finds her but develops a supernatural power to see others whose family members have been kidnapped and determine what has happened to them. This is a graphic novel, detailing the plight of torture victims. While hard to stomach, it throws light on a period of time Argentina is still coming to terms with. The novel was made into a movie in 2003 starring Antonio Banderas and Emma Thompson.

Tourism is rapidly changing some of the charms of Buenos Aires, including its historic neighborhood bars. For a glimpse into that rapidly disappearing world, get the photo book Bares de Buenos Aires, by Buenos Aires-born photographer Constanza Mirre (Ediciones Larivière, 2000). Most of the photographs date from the mid-1990's and are a vision of working class neighborhoods, old men socializing, and a way of Porteño life that has gone on for almost 100 years.

One of my favorite books on Buenos Aires is the chick-lit memoir Kiss & Tango by Marina Palmer (William Morrow, 2005). Marina was a bored advertising executive in New York who came down to visit a relative in Buenos Aires. After one visit to a milonga, she decided this was the life for her. Of course, parents and bosses have different views, adding to the drama and stress of her decision. Most of her stress, though, was caused by the men she met in milongas. Read her book and compare it to your own fantasies of being swept off your feet by a handsome Latin hunk. Rumor has it the book will be made into a movie sometime in the near future, so keep a look out.