Teatro: La granada y la batalla

by Rodolfo Walsh

Written in 1965, these plays feature much of the scenic experimentation that was essential to the decade, which comes as a surprise coming from a man known primarily as a narrator, more than a playwright. La Granada deals with the cruelty and stupidity found in most South American military. La Batalla is a tragedy about the games played in the high spheres of power of an imaginary (or maybe not) Latin American country.

763 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1965

About the author

Rodolfo Jorge Walsh was an Argentine writer, considered the founder of investigative journalism in Argentina. He remains disappeared since March 25, 1977.

After finishing the primary education in his small town in Río Negro Province, Walsh moved to Buenos Aires in 1941, where he completed high school. Although he started studying philosophy at university, he abandoned it and did a number of different jobs, including editorial. In the late 1940s he joined the Alianza Libertadora Nacionalista, from which he later moved to the Peronist cause.

In 1953 he received the Buenos Aires Municipal Literature Award for his book Variaciones en Rojo. In 1957 he finished Operación Masacre, an investigative work on the assassination of opposition figures during the military government of Aramburu. In 1960 he went to Cuba, where, together with Jorge Masetti, he founded the Prensa Latina press agency. He was then close to the CGT de los Argentinos.

Back in Argentina in 1973, Walsh joined the Montoneros radical group, and four years later he was killed during a shoot-out with a special military group that set him an ambush. His body and some of his writings were never seen again. The day before his death he wrote an Open Letter to the Military Junta protesting that their economic policies were having an even greater effect on ordinary Argentines than their human rights abuses.

Four films have been based on his work, including Operación masacre (1973) and Asesinato a distancia (1998), and three of his books were published years after his death, most notably Cuento para tahúres y otros relatos policiales.

Reviews

[Noctowl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Walsh escribía muy buen teatro, no tengo mucho más que decir

[Fugo Feedback]

No sólo no tengo este libro sino que creo que nunca lo vi en ninguna librería. Pero mientras exista y sea de Walsh, queda como to-read nomás. Espero que alguien que sí lo tenga (y lo haya leído) escriba alguna reseña acá así disminuyen las chances de que algún librarian imbécil lo borre de un plumazo.

[Variaciones Enrojo]

Primera edición de De la Flor.

[Variaciones Enrojo]

Nueva edición de portada horrible y desabrida.

[Variaciones Enrojo]

Primera edición, publicada en los 60s por Jorge Álvarez Editor.