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The Tunnel[TUNNEL REV/E][Paperback]
The Tunnel <> Paperback <> ErnestoSabato <> PenguinBooks
Paperback
Published June 30, 2012
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August 25, 2025
Juan Pablo Castel is a painter of renown. Maria Iribane Hunter, a timid and introverted woman finds herself mesmerised by a painting of Castel and stands before it in awe. Castel in turn becomes besotted with Maria. The passion of Castel towards Maria transforms into a maniacally ugly obsession and Castel ends up murdering Maria. The Tunnel is the extraordinary breakthrough novel of a Physicist (Doctorate in Physics from the Universidad Nacional de la Plata) turned author, and contemporary of Jorge Luis Borges, Ernesto Sábato. At first glance, the slender volume seems unremarkable enough. Man meets woman, man falls deeply in love with woman, man gets scorned, and man kills woman. But the clinical confession of Castel from the confines of prison sends a shiver down the spine of his reader.
‘It should be sufficient to say that I am Juan Pablo Castel, the painter who killed María Iribarne.’ Thus begins the autobiographical revelation of Juan Pablo Castel. Brazen, yet unbiased, the narrative vacillates with grave unpredictability between a surreal sense of calm and uncontrolled bouts of swirling chaos. The controlled precision of Castel has the reader alternating between empathising with the murderer and overcome by inclinations to throttle him with bare hands. As the plot thickens, the reader begins to realise that she is a hapless and helpless puppet on a string that is being stupendously and ruthlessly manipulated by a cold-hearted sociopath.
Sábato juxtaposes ingenious paradox with raw and savage vitriol. Castel, an epitome of vanity, allows himself the impetuous luxury of cocking a snook at the world, which according to the confessor reeks of vanity. “People make me laugh when they talk about the modesty of an Einstein or someone of his kind. My answer to them is that it is easy to be modest when you are famous. That is, appear to be modest. Even when you think the person hasn’t the slightest trace of vanity, you suddenly discover it in its most subtle form: the vanity of modesty.”
Castel, at a certain point in his monologue even accords his “unqualified permission” to the reader to immediately “stop reading this account,” if such a desire were to overcome and overwhelm them! If Castel evokes raw and incendiary emotions in his reader, Maria succeeds beyond imagination in leading her readers towards the precipice of exasperation. Allowing herself to be metaphorically mauled and physically maimed by Castel, she inexplicably wills the cold hands of calamity to not just approach her but embrace her with undisguised delight.
Shades of Dostoevsky’s magisterial work, Crime and Punishment can be gleaned in Sábato’s book. Castel does a Raskolnikov in weighing the moral aspects of his crime and attempting to justify the dastardly deed by taking recourse to convoluted metaphysical and judgmental imports. “The filthy bitch (a random prostitute picked up by Castel in a fit of fury), and the fragile creature who had inspired me to paint them (Maria), both, at a certain moment in their lives had worn the same expression. Dear God, how can you have faith in human nature when you think that a sewer and certain moments of Schumann or Brahms are connected by secret, shadowy, subterranean passageways.”
The Tunnel attained acclaim after being publicly praised by Albert Camus and Graham Greene. Camus even went to the altruistic extent of commissioning the book to a French publisher after Sabàto failed to find one in Buenos Aires.
The Tunnel – a passage into the darkest depths of a tortured and conflicted being.
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‘It should be sufficient to say that I am Juan Pablo Castel, the painter who killed María Iribarne.’ Thus begins the autobiographical revelation of Juan Pablo Castel. Brazen, yet unbiased, the narrative vacillates with grave unpredictability between a surreal sense of calm and uncontrolled bouts of swirling chaos. The controlled precision of Castel has the reader alternating between empathising with the murderer and overcome by inclinations to throttle him with bare hands. As the plot thickens, the reader begins to realise that she is a hapless and helpless puppet on a string that is being stupendously and ruthlessly manipulated by a cold-hearted sociopath.
Sábato juxtaposes ingenious paradox with raw and savage vitriol. Castel, an epitome of vanity, allows himself the impetuous luxury of cocking a snook at the world, which according to the confessor reeks of vanity. “People make me laugh when they talk about the modesty of an Einstein or someone of his kind. My answer to them is that it is easy to be modest when you are famous. That is, appear to be modest. Even when you think the person hasn’t the slightest trace of vanity, you suddenly discover it in its most subtle form: the vanity of modesty.”
Castel, at a certain point in his monologue even accords his “unqualified permission” to the reader to immediately “stop reading this account,” if such a desire were to overcome and overwhelm them! If Castel evokes raw and incendiary emotions in his reader, Maria succeeds beyond imagination in leading her readers towards the precipice of exasperation. Allowing herself to be metaphorically mauled and physically maimed by Castel, she inexplicably wills the cold hands of calamity to not just approach her but embrace her with undisguised delight.
Shades of Dostoevsky’s magisterial work, Crime and Punishment can be gleaned in Sábato’s book. Castel does a Raskolnikov in weighing the moral aspects of his crime and attempting to justify the dastardly deed by taking recourse to convoluted metaphysical and judgmental imports. “The filthy bitch (a random prostitute picked up by Castel in a fit of fury), and the fragile creature who had inspired me to paint them (Maria), both, at a certain moment in their lives had worn the same expression. Dear God, how can you have faith in human nature when you think that a sewer and certain moments of Schumann or Brahms are connected by secret, shadowy, subterranean passageways.”
The Tunnel attained acclaim after being publicly praised by Albert Camus and Graham Greene. Camus even went to the altruistic extent of commissioning the book to a French publisher after Sabàto failed to find one in Buenos Aires.
The Tunnel – a passage into the darkest depths of a tortured and conflicted being.
Share this:
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