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77
Buenos Aires, 1977. In the darkest days of the Videla dictatorship, Gómez, a gay high-school literature teacher, tries to keep a low profile as one-by-one, his friends and students begin to disappear. When Esteban, one of Gómez's favorite students, is taken away in a classroom raid, Gómez realizes that no one is safe anymore, and that asking too many questions can have lethal consequences. His life gradually becomes a paranoid, insomniac nightmare that not even his nightly forays into bars and bathhouses in search of anonymous sex can relieve. Things get even more complicated when he takes in two dissidents, putting his life at risk—especially since he's been having an affair with a homophobic, sadistic cop with ties to the military government. Told mostly in flashbacks thirty years later, 77 is rich in descriptive detail, dream sequences, and even elements of the occult, which build into a haunting novel about absence and the clash between morality and survival when living under a dictatorship.
220 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2008
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October 25, 2020
There’s a lot going on in this Argentinian novel set in Buenos Aires in 1977, during the days of the iron-fisted dictatorship that terrorized its own people. Thousands of people were imprisoned, tortured and “disappeared.” The story is told in flashbacks by a man who’s in his 80’s now and who had been in his fifties when these events occurred.
Our main character is a gay high-school literature teacher. He tries to keep a low profile as, one-by-one, his friends and students disappear. It’s risky to go out evenings, but he picks up men in bars and bathhouses. Several times he and companions are beaten up – he’s even hospitalized once. Often the cops take their money. Another time he realizes that one of the cops beating them is gay too and they begin an affair – a dangerous situation for both individuals. Parents of the missing come to the main character to find out where their loved ones are and if they are still alive. So the main character walks a fine line between asking questions and asking TOO MANY questions; and his policeman lover walks the fine line of giving some answers and giving away TOO MUCH information.
The police/military drive green Ford Falcons which become symbols of terror and evil. They spill out of the car and beat people with rifle butts and spirit them away. The victims are usually young rebels, men or women, and most often they are never seen again. The main character sees these vehicles pull up and take people away almost nightly. Many of the anti-government conspirators carry cyanide pills with them, so the first thing the police do is to stick their fingers in their victims’ mouths to be sure they’re not taking a pill. They are tortured until they give up names of other anti-dictator associates – any names will do – and the process repeats. Suspicion and paranoia are everywhere. Building superintendents are particularly regarded as informers, so any interaction with them is fraught with anxiety.
The main character takes supreme risks when a friend leaves his pregnant girlfriend to hide at his apartment. She’s actively wanted by the police. Interspersed through the story are bits of terror as when parents despairing of their lost son receive a package on their doorstep.
In despair some people turn to psychics and spiritualists to ‘speak with’ their lost loved ones. Families frequently have pictures of the Blessed Ceferino (1886-1905), a modern Argentinian Indian saint who has a cult-like following. (See Wikipedia entry.)
Although it’s unrelated to the current dictatorship, one of the characters has a father who was involved in the notorious 1955 Argentina Air Force bombing and strafing of Buenos Aires’ Plaza de Mayo where thousands of people had gathered. More than 300 were killed and countless people wounded. The planes had the words “Christ Conquers” painted on them. The incident is mentioned a couple of times as an atrocious example of military action against a nation’s own people.
There are two extended sub-stories. One is that a friend of the main character meets with him to tell him of his on-going affair with a former student who is married to an invalid husband. That couple’s son is missing.
Another sub-story is his reading of his pregnant guest’s love letters. They are not letters to her current male lover, but to a former lesbian lover.
There is some good writing. The main character tells us that “terror and laughter are incestuous siblings” and that, because he has money inherited from his mother and doesn’t really have to work, he “feels like a tourist in a concentration camp.” As he does his nightly prowling he’s subject to “obsessive wandering syndrome” and he says “hospitals and prisons smell the same.” Of the city he writes “A soft-boiled Buenos Aires was Paris in a downpour.”
I liked this book a lot. I don’t want to say “I enjoyed it,” because how can you say that when you have descriptions of such real terror? I learned a lot about the situation in Argentina at that time. Using the fifty-year rule, it’s almost a ‘historical novel’ that gives you an excellent feel for what life was like living under that reign of terror.
The author (b. 1948) is a journalist, novelist and short story writer. He has won two Dashiell Hammett Awards, one for this book, 77.
Top photo a 1970's Ford Falcon used by police in Argentina from imcdb.org
The Blessed Ceferino from epicpew.com
1955 photo of the bombed Plaza de Mayo from alchetron.com
The author from lareviewofbooks-org
Our main character is a gay high-school literature teacher. He tries to keep a low profile as, one-by-one, his friends and students disappear. It’s risky to go out evenings, but he picks up men in bars and bathhouses. Several times he and companions are beaten up – he’s even hospitalized once. Often the cops take their money. Another time he realizes that one of the cops beating them is gay too and they begin an affair – a dangerous situation for both individuals. Parents of the missing come to the main character to find out where their loved ones are and if they are still alive. So the main character walks a fine line between asking questions and asking TOO MANY questions; and his policeman lover walks the fine line of giving some answers and giving away TOO MUCH information.
The police/military drive green Ford Falcons which become symbols of terror and evil. They spill out of the car and beat people with rifle butts and spirit them away. The victims are usually young rebels, men or women, and most often they are never seen again. The main character sees these vehicles pull up and take people away almost nightly. Many of the anti-government conspirators carry cyanide pills with them, so the first thing the police do is to stick their fingers in their victims’ mouths to be sure they’re not taking a pill. They are tortured until they give up names of other anti-dictator associates – any names will do – and the process repeats. Suspicion and paranoia are everywhere. Building superintendents are particularly regarded as informers, so any interaction with them is fraught with anxiety.
The main character takes supreme risks when a friend leaves his pregnant girlfriend to hide at his apartment. She’s actively wanted by the police. Interspersed through the story are bits of terror as when parents despairing of their lost son receive a package on their doorstep.
In despair some people turn to psychics and spiritualists to ‘speak with’ their lost loved ones. Families frequently have pictures of the Blessed Ceferino (1886-1905), a modern Argentinian Indian saint who has a cult-like following. (See Wikipedia entry.)
Although it’s unrelated to the current dictatorship, one of the characters has a father who was involved in the notorious 1955 Argentina Air Force bombing and strafing of Buenos Aires’ Plaza de Mayo where thousands of people had gathered. More than 300 were killed and countless people wounded. The planes had the words “Christ Conquers” painted on them. The incident is mentioned a couple of times as an atrocious example of military action against a nation’s own people.
There are two extended sub-stories. One is that a friend of the main character meets with him to tell him of his on-going affair with a former student who is married to an invalid husband. That couple’s son is missing.
Another sub-story is his reading of his pregnant guest’s love letters. They are not letters to her current male lover, but to a former lesbian lover.
There is some good writing. The main character tells us that “terror and laughter are incestuous siblings” and that, because he has money inherited from his mother and doesn’t really have to work, he “feels like a tourist in a concentration camp.” As he does his nightly prowling he’s subject to “obsessive wandering syndrome” and he says “hospitals and prisons smell the same.” Of the city he writes “A soft-boiled Buenos Aires was Paris in a downpour.”
I liked this book a lot. I don’t want to say “I enjoyed it,” because how can you say that when you have descriptions of such real terror? I learned a lot about the situation in Argentina at that time. Using the fifty-year rule, it’s almost a ‘historical novel’ that gives you an excellent feel for what life was like living under that reign of terror.
The author (b. 1948) is a journalist, novelist and short story writer. He has won two Dashiell Hammett Awards, one for this book, 77.
Top photo a 1970's Ford Falcon used by police in Argentina from imcdb.org
The Blessed Ceferino from epicpew.com
1955 photo of the bombed Plaza de Mayo from alchetron.com
The author from lareviewofbooks-org
February 23, 2019
A winding, sometimes-fascinating, claustrophobic novel about life under Videla in Argentina. The lead, Gomez, is something of a cipher, though everything he gets up to (gay affairs with police officers, sheltering pregnant dissidents, writing essays on nothingness) is fascinating. The book can be a bit confusing, which I think is an effort to depict life in Argentina in the 70s. Characters flit in and out, vanishing and reappearing. Time behaves oddly. Violence peppers the margins. It’s best of all in its subplots, which are mystical and gripping. Cautiously recommend, if you’re patient and interested in the period.
December 18, 2018
The second novel from Saccomanno in English translation is a much tamer affair than the comic take on Dante’s Inferno, the exuberant monster Gesell Dome. A snapshot of the seventies inside the Argentine Videla regime, the terror-tickled lead Gómez relates tales of past acquaintances, among them two young revolutionaries, an OAP skirt-chaser, a macho muchacho cop lover, and a neighbour into hair-burning occult practices, while relating his own erotic adventures in the realm of nubile youths. An inventive, pensive, and comic series of scenes and remembrances, the novel evokes the quotidian terror experienced when living under a corrupt and violent regime. As Western democracy arseplummets into the new autocracy, with post-Brexit UK the first banana republic (sans the bananas), these sorts of novels are astute reminders of things we already know, and have no power to change.
April 23, 2019
It's after 1 a.m., I'm tired, and so my words will have to wait except for this: one of the best books I've read this year.
More to come.
More to come.
August 7, 2024
(corrected in August 2024 to read better but otherwise unaltered)
Dazzling - I don't know what else to say about this very powerful and very disturbing novel. The most disturbing thing about this novel is that it appears dreadfully relevant and predictive. I was a schoolboy/student (in Ireland not Argentina) during the years of Peron's return, his death, his second wife becoming president, the military take over and the years of the disappeared and I can remember it from reports in the press, even in Ireland. This was long before Lloyd Webber created his own 'Springtime for Hitler' (please see my footnote *1 below) in 'Evita' and it was horrifying to read about the descent of a country into madness, but then so where many other countries in South America, all with the discreet and not so discreet encouragement and help of the USA. I never thought that a novel dealing with the perverted madness that created the justifications and explanations for the need for the obscenities of those years would in the second quarter of the 21st century speak very loudly and clearly as a warning for the current state of the UK and USA.
Saccomanno's novel is a tour de force of what it is like to live with fear and the fear that fear creates and how it drains and distorts everyone and everything. I can't imagine (outside of novels and memoirs of those who lived under Nazi rule in Europe during WWII) a better account of that powerlessness which saps and destroys you through not knowing what has happened to a loved one who disappears.
"I know that in those days...what wasn't so easy to accept...was the uncertainty...Parting wasn't the same as forgetting. Saying goodbye to someone meant remembering...(and) in that remembering there lurked all the darkness that terror forced you to imagine...It was a cold sweat, dark and sticky. And it wasn't death either. It was worse than death. A disappearance wasn't the same thing as death.
The gruesomeness of death...had its own logic...But the other thing...that (was) death yet wasn't death...(was) worse...was always there, like your own shadow. And you can't get rid of your shadow."
This is a truly remarkable novel, I would compare it to a little known film 'Apartment Zero' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apartme..., which dealt with the same period in a way that also combines sexuality, paranoia, fear, destruction and everything else. Both novel and film are first rate portrayals of those who experience hate as sanctioned, authorised, excused and justified by those with power against the powerless; and the surprise of so many when they discover that they are amongst the powerless but find there is no unity or comfort in suffering.
I can't praise this novel enough, it is beyond me. But it is fine and true and good and I can't think of a higher compliment to give a novel.
*1 If this reference means nothing to you then please follow this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zY1o... which will introduce you to the 1968 Mel Brooks film 'The Producers' (though the actual excerpt is taken from the 2008 remake.
Dazzling - I don't know what else to say about this very powerful and very disturbing novel. The most disturbing thing about this novel is that it appears dreadfully relevant and predictive. I was a schoolboy/student (in Ireland not Argentina) during the years of Peron's return, his death, his second wife becoming president, the military take over and the years of the disappeared and I can remember it from reports in the press, even in Ireland. This was long before Lloyd Webber created his own 'Springtime for Hitler' (please see my footnote *1 below) in 'Evita' and it was horrifying to read about the descent of a country into madness, but then so where many other countries in South America, all with the discreet and not so discreet encouragement and help of the USA. I never thought that a novel dealing with the perverted madness that created the justifications and explanations for the need for the obscenities of those years would in the second quarter of the 21st century speak very loudly and clearly as a warning for the current state of the UK and USA.
Saccomanno's novel is a tour de force of what it is like to live with fear and the fear that fear creates and how it drains and distorts everyone and everything. I can't imagine (outside of novels and memoirs of those who lived under Nazi rule in Europe during WWII) a better account of that powerlessness which saps and destroys you through not knowing what has happened to a loved one who disappears.
"I know that in those days...what wasn't so easy to accept...was the uncertainty...Parting wasn't the same as forgetting. Saying goodbye to someone meant remembering...(and) in that remembering there lurked all the darkness that terror forced you to imagine...It was a cold sweat, dark and sticky. And it wasn't death either. It was worse than death. A disappearance wasn't the same thing as death.
The gruesomeness of death...had its own logic...But the other thing...that (was) death yet wasn't death...(was) worse...was always there, like your own shadow. And you can't get rid of your shadow."
This is a truly remarkable novel, I would compare it to a little known film 'Apartment Zero' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apartme..., which dealt with the same period in a way that also combines sexuality, paranoia, fear, destruction and everything else. Both novel and film are first rate portrayals of those who experience hate as sanctioned, authorised, excused and justified by those with power against the powerless; and the surprise of so many when they discover that they are amongst the powerless but find there is no unity or comfort in suffering.
I can't praise this novel enough, it is beyond me. But it is fine and true and good and I can't think of a higher compliment to give a novel.
*1 If this reference means nothing to you then please follow this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zY1o... which will introduce you to the 1968 Mel Brooks film 'The Producers' (though the actual excerpt is taken from the 2008 remake.
October 31, 2020
Falcons,
Paranoia &
Homosexuals
Paranoia &
Homosexuals
December 18, 2019
Well this is my second novel with Guillermo Saccomanno as the author after I started reading his monumental epic Gesell Dome this autumn. And while I did not find time enough to finish this earlier work I happened to pick up this one this month. This was one of the new releases by Open Letter publisher this year. The plot and the narrative structure in this book is wholly different than the earlier novel. While the previous novel was like 'a raging sea of souls, tenuous and disenchanted, sinking into the mortal quagmire of reflections of their reeking souls, tenebrous and culpable', this one novel is indeed 'a savage indictment of a totalitarian regime, told in hallucinatory prose from the pen of a writer who has a penchant for a style that is wholly original and inventive'. In all versimilitude, this novel tells the story of a Buenos Aires in 1977, in the darkest days of the Videla dictatorship. The story is told through flashbacks and recollections of a gay, high-school literature teacher who has a unique penchant for Oscar Wilde and one night hook-ups with his male friends. The story goes into great lengths detailing his sexual preferences and if it were not for the uniquely structured plot this would have been mistaken for a LGBT novel. And one common running theme are the political atrocities committed on young people and students, and 'the poltical watch dog always running around in the streets in green Falcons' always on the brink of malevolence running a reign of terror through the streets. There are several other characters with their stories sidewinding alongside the main plot which is told thirty years later in the form of recollections. What with the presence of a randy and lecherous old poet who happens to be the narrator's friend, and his illicit affair with one of his students; what with a semblance of the supernatural and the occult that makes its presence in one of their nightly liaisions; what with the presence of two young dissidents (one happens to be a lesbian, BTW!) that seek shelter in the narrator's place and their intemperate liaisions; what with the homosexual relationship that arises between a homophobic cop and the narrator that seeks to engulf the latter in a moral and political conundrum, this novel makes for a wonderful roller-coster ride through the dark depths of human souls. Highly recommended!
June 28, 2019
This is the second novel by award-winning Argentinian author, Guillermo Saccomanno, translated to English by Andrea G. Labinger for Open Letter books and it is a good one. The main story takes place in 1977 during the period called "The Dirty War," that followed the military displacement of Isabel Peron. From this period of Government sponsored terrorism, came the term, "The Disappeared," referring to the estimates of 30,000 people arrested, kidnapped, and murdered by "police death squads." Saccomanno's narrator reflects back on this period when he was a teacher and tells the story not just from his perspective but also in subplots related by other characters who have engaged him. The novel jumps around in time and from plotline to plotline as it is being narrated which produces a unsettled sense in the reader as Saccomanno builds an atmosphere of paranoia for his narrator. Saccomanno still has room for sex and humor in the novel stemming from the narrator's homosexual adventures and a friend's heterosexual obsession. I liked most that Saccomanno captures in his characters the mundane preoccupations that seem to occur in individuals under high stress where the actions they choose would barely seem rational. This was an interesting novel on a period of which I was too ignorant.
June 29, 2019
Argentina những năm 70 - lộn xộn và đầy bất trắc, cuốn sách kể về bức tranh xã hội của Argentina dưới góc nhìn của một giáo sư đồng tính, đầy hỗn loạn, những đảng phái tranh giành quyền lực, quân đội bất lực, người dân sống trong sự hoang mang, đọc rất thú vị vì rất lạ, ta chưa bao giờ được nhìn Argentina dưới góc nhìn kỳ lạ và đầy bất an như thế.
June 22, 2019
Wow - this novel, what a stunner! Historical noir set mainly during the Dirty War in Argentina. We follow Gomez, a gay former high school literature professor now in his 80's as he recalls the events of the novel from 30 years earlier while he's in his 50's. Gomez serves as both protagonist of his own story and as a conduit for the stories of other victims of "the terror" of the Videla dictatorship that he meets and talks with. Lots of sudden hops between stories and back and forth in time, but the book never feels hard to follow due to the vividness of the writing. Lots of thrillingly David Lynchian, surrealist scenes. Tense and brutal with a bit of the occult thrown in for good measure, this book really brings home the fear and paranoia brought about by life under a murderous autocrat. A great read.
August 29, 2025
Badly written, overblown and inaccurate story, politically correct and sleep inducing ranting.
March 12, 2022
77 is Guillermo Saccomanno's reflection of life under authoritarian rule in Argentina in the 1970s.
Professor Gomez is a literature professor in Buenos Aires who seems agnostic to the political world around him, thinking little beyond an attempt to survive the military police state that has risen up around him. As he watches his students, friends, and colleagues - all with varying degrees of revolutionary and Peronist leanings - be disappeared by the military junta, Gomez reflects on his own terror and inability to "do" something. Gomez' experience is complicated more by his secret sexual relationship with Walter, a police officer with sympathies with the ruling junta. As terror and fear rain down around him, Gomez comes to terms with his position in a society that is spinning increasingly out of control.
Saccomanno's writing is dark and cerebral and 77 reads much like a Dostoevsky novel with a Latin flair. But the writing in the book can also be challenging to follow and clunky at times, a defect that might be caused by style or translation or both. Prior knowledge of Argentinian history helps with this read, but overall 77 is worth it.
Professor Gomez is a literature professor in Buenos Aires who seems agnostic to the political world around him, thinking little beyond an attempt to survive the military police state that has risen up around him. As he watches his students, friends, and colleagues - all with varying degrees of revolutionary and Peronist leanings - be disappeared by the military junta, Gomez reflects on his own terror and inability to "do" something. Gomez' experience is complicated more by his secret sexual relationship with Walter, a police officer with sympathies with the ruling junta. As terror and fear rain down around him, Gomez comes to terms with his position in a society that is spinning increasingly out of control.
Saccomanno's writing is dark and cerebral and 77 reads much like a Dostoevsky novel with a Latin flair. But the writing in the book can also be challenging to follow and clunky at times, a defect that might be caused by style or translation or both. Prior knowledge of Argentinian history helps with this read, but overall 77 is worth it.
May 4, 2019
This is mostly harsh and relentless. Saccomanno's prose is clean and quiet. The novel does meander a bit in the second half; the sequence with Gomez sheltering the dissidents seems to be a bit of a digression.
February 25, 2019
Though written in 2008 this has only just been published in English.
This is Buenos Aires in 1977 under the Videla regime. Green Ford Falcons hover ominously on every street corner, and police beat or imprison people for no apparent reason, and yet the residents of Buenos Aires try to go about their normal business. But looking the other way eventually becomes an untenable proposition for the protagonist, secondary school teacher, Gómez. A student gets taken by gunpoint from his class, and he finds himself involved with a homophobic cop. Before long two young dissidents show up seeking refuge at his apartment, and he is more involved then he ever thought he could be.
As attractive a premise as it seems, I found Saccomanno’s writing did not hold my attention; fascinating as a series of occasional vignettes, but with little to hold them together.
This is Buenos Aires in 1977 under the Videla regime. Green Ford Falcons hover ominously on every street corner, and police beat or imprison people for no apparent reason, and yet the residents of Buenos Aires try to go about their normal business. But looking the other way eventually becomes an untenable proposition for the protagonist, secondary school teacher, Gómez. A student gets taken by gunpoint from his class, and he finds himself involved with a homophobic cop. Before long two young dissidents show up seeking refuge at his apartment, and he is more involved then he ever thought he could be.
As attractive a premise as it seems, I found Saccomanno’s writing did not hold my attention; fascinating as a series of occasional vignettes, but with little to hold them together.
April 22, 2020
Longlisted for 2020 Best Translated Book Award.
My video review— https://youtu.be/aA8vc2wdYS8
My video review— https://youtu.be/aA8vc2wdYS8
August 28, 2014
1977, Argentina. One year earlier, Videla became president after the coup that deposed Isabel Peron. The story of the terror and violence of those days is told through the memories of professor Gomez, who (in his mid-fifties back then) witnessed women and students being beaten and killed, adults and children being taken on the streets, the pain of the parents, the suspicion hanging on everyone's head, and the grey, suffocating fear permeating every aspect of life.
Gomez is a self-proclaimed coward, indecisive and needy for love and attention, and yet with small gestures, he tries to help those around him and show some kindness to the desperate souls he meets, even though by the end he is sure he couldn't really save anyone, or redeem himself of the times he presented not to see. But at least he has this - he can tell the full story of those people, tell all the truth he could never voice back then.
The book is beautifully melancholic, and does a nice job entwining historical events to very personal moments featuring doomed relationships, the clash between generations, and the inner contradictions of human beings.
3 and a half stars.
Gomez is a self-proclaimed coward, indecisive and needy for love and attention, and yet with small gestures, he tries to help those around him and show some kindness to the desperate souls he meets, even though by the end he is sure he couldn't really save anyone, or redeem himself of the times he presented not to see. But at least he has this - he can tell the full story of those people, tell all the truth he could never voice back then.
The book is beautifully melancholic, and does a nice job entwining historical events to very personal moments featuring doomed relationships, the clash between generations, and the inner contradictions of human beings.
3 and a half stars.
September 3, 2025
I was lucky enough to pick this up on my last stop in Asheville at my favorite used book store. I try to get at least one book out of my comfort zone each time I go. I'll admit I found this to be a bit of a challenging read and required more patience than I was able to give it at times, so it took me a while to digest. The timeline can be a bit confusing and the tone hard to read but once I allowed Saccomanno to pull me into the fever dream that is Gomez's memory it got a bit easier but here we go..
The novel is inflated with paranoia as though it were a slow, suffocating leak. Gomez believes he is being watched on his walks, his neighbors are out to get him, his phone is tapped... he deteriorates before us but we can't blame him for life in Argentina during the dictatorship was rife with danger, the horrors unrelenting. Saccomanno creates an atmosphere of delirium and spackles it together with sobering accounts of violence and emotional cruelty. The story here is fervent and then it is human, it is raw, it is just as if you and me were forced to go on albeit fascist boots on our necks. The suspicion that seeps into our daily lives when under surveillance by our neighbors, teachers and friends is enough to drive a man mad.
The subplots hold up our narrator, perhaps the only thing propelling him onward, giving him the courage to resist and reminding us the human need for connection persists even under such conditions. In Gomez's case it is his life force. He likens these relationships to literature, his obsession, the secondhand experience- his reason for living. Gomez lends an ear to his friends as they disappear or die, listening to those who tell him their stories. As they tell them to themselves, convincing themselves it was real, we return the favor - listening to Gomez, relieving him of the burden of bearing it alone. What is literature if not a relief, a reprieve from the darkness of life, what separates it from vice?
The novel is inflated with paranoia as though it were a slow, suffocating leak. Gomez believes he is being watched on his walks, his neighbors are out to get him, his phone is tapped... he deteriorates before us but we can't blame him for life in Argentina during the dictatorship was rife with danger, the horrors unrelenting. Saccomanno creates an atmosphere of delirium and spackles it together with sobering accounts of violence and emotional cruelty. The story here is fervent and then it is human, it is raw, it is just as if you and me were forced to go on albeit fascist boots on our necks. The suspicion that seeps into our daily lives when under surveillance by our neighbors, teachers and friends is enough to drive a man mad.
The subplots hold up our narrator, perhaps the only thing propelling him onward, giving him the courage to resist and reminding us the human need for connection persists even under such conditions. In Gomez's case it is his life force. He likens these relationships to literature, his obsession, the secondhand experience- his reason for living. Gomez lends an ear to his friends as they disappear or die, listening to those who tell him their stories. As they tell them to themselves, convincing themselves it was real, we return the favor - listening to Gomez, relieving him of the burden of bearing it alone. What is literature if not a relief, a reprieve from the darkness of life, what separates it from vice?
August 8, 2021
"To resist, I thought. That was what it meant to survive: to resist. I took the book out of my briefcase. I stood in front of the class. Once more I read: On ne tue point les idées."
"77" by Guillermo Saccomanno. Winner of the 2008 Hammett Prize. Translated to English by Andrea G. Labinger, three times finalist of the PEN USA competition.
At the height of Videla's Argentina, the Government launched seven-year (1976-83) campaign against suspected dissidents and subversives, often known as the “Dirty War". Between 10,000 and 30,000 people were killed, including opponents of the government as well as innocent victims. Enter Gómez, a gay high-school literature teacher who tries to keep a low profile as, one by one, his friends and students begin to disappear.
For the longest time I wasn't so sure about this book.. But since it kept popping out here and there, I decided to read it hahah. Turns out I enjoyed this a lot!!
It's a story of life without closure. Imagine a colleague of yours who didn't come to work one day, and the day after, and the day after..until you realize they probably will never come back. Such is the dread and suspense I get from reading this book. I had a tough time reading books last week but I keep coming back to this because I can't wait to find out what happens next 👀
I googled what "On ne tue point les idées" means... Apparently it's in French and in English, it translates to "Men can be beheaded. Ideas cannot."
"77" by Guillermo Saccomanno. Winner of the 2008 Hammett Prize. Translated to English by Andrea G. Labinger, three times finalist of the PEN USA competition.
At the height of Videla's Argentina, the Government launched seven-year (1976-83) campaign against suspected dissidents and subversives, often known as the “Dirty War". Between 10,000 and 30,000 people were killed, including opponents of the government as well as innocent victims. Enter Gómez, a gay high-school literature teacher who tries to keep a low profile as, one by one, his friends and students begin to disappear.
For the longest time I wasn't so sure about this book.. But since it kept popping out here and there, I decided to read it hahah. Turns out I enjoyed this a lot!!
It's a story of life without closure. Imagine a colleague of yours who didn't come to work one day, and the day after, and the day after..until you realize they probably will never come back. Such is the dread and suspense I get from reading this book. I had a tough time reading books last week but I keep coming back to this because I can't wait to find out what happens next 👀
I googled what "On ne tue point les idées" means... Apparently it's in French and in English, it translates to "Men can be beheaded. Ideas cannot."
July 22, 2022
77 is narrated decades after the events of the story, to an unnamed listener, and it's easy to forget that, as they rarely drop that wall. There's a point (page 43 of my copy) where Gomez suddenly recalls a past atrocity from the start of the "Great Damage", and the way its rendered was so artful and felt so real. In a moment, "the past wrapped around me like a mouthful of fire that destroyed everything, like those bombs, the dark smoke clouds rising from the puddles of gasoline and blood ... My memory never left me alone." Yet just as quickly as it began, he forces himself to look away and stop thinking about the atrocities he's witnessed, like a pair of magnets attracting and repelling.
77 starts so strong. I didn't know much about this period of Argentina's history, and I imagine the more I knew the richer the text would be, but I still found it vivid and disturbing. The description of his lonely night-wandering, particularly the start of the second chapter, was particularly affecting. I thought it dragged a touch in the middle with some of the subplots, particularly De Franco's story, but the ending was absolutely perfect.
77 starts so strong. I didn't know much about this period of Argentina's history, and I imagine the more I knew the richer the text would be, but I still found it vivid and disturbing. The description of his lonely night-wandering, particularly the start of the second chapter, was particularly affecting. I thought it dragged a touch in the middle with some of the subplots, particularly De Franco's story, but the ending was absolutely perfect.
August 4, 2021
This is not a bad book. In fact, there are some parts I really enjoyed, but my disappointment stems from the execution of the story. In 77, we are following Gomez, an English teacher in Argentina during the dictatorship of Videla. He is gay, and begins to have a relationship with a policeman. Several of his former students join various guerrilla groups and he ends up taking in a few of these youngsters as they fear for their safety. Saccomanno does an admirable job of creating an atmosphere where you were constantly in fear of being picked up by the government and never seen from again. I truly wish the book spent more time with Gomez and his individual storyline, as I found the subplots less compelling. The way the book is presented, we jump back and forth in time and this also impacted my enjoyment of the novel. Not a particularly memorable read for me, unfortunately. 2.5/5
February 18, 2022
I have mixed feelings about 77 and I'm not sure I know why. I like the author and the novel is well written. The story is intense, sad, personal, and political. What's not to like? Although it will sound strange, for me, at times, the story seemed too personal. For a significant section of the novel, the author uses a literary device to move the story forward. A central character reveals in depth the very personal and sexual correspondence of two other characters in the story. Although it makes no real sense, it made me see the character as a voyeur and myself as an uncomfortable participant. I don't believe that was the author's intent and attribute my discomfort to my personal idiosyncrasies.
So, a very powerful book that will no doubt have an emotional impact on any serious and sensitive reader.
So, a very powerful book that will no doubt have an emotional impact on any serious and sensitive reader.
May 24, 2024
4.0.
Really beautifully written--er, translated--and a vivid portrait of what living under dictatorship really feels like. Even if you aren't a revolutionary you can get caught in the cross-fire. Even if you're hiding a pregnant woman who may or may not be a murderer, you have a duty to your fellow man.
Loved a lot of this. Really my only issue was that though the spare details really added to the tone of the novel it made it hard to remember who was who in the revolving door of Gómez's interactions. You get it enough through repetition and context but a refresher every now and then would've been nice.
Really beautifully written--er, translated--and a vivid portrait of what living under dictatorship really feels like. Even if you aren't a revolutionary you can get caught in the cross-fire. Even if you're hiding a pregnant woman who may or may not be a murderer, you have a duty to your fellow man.
Loved a lot of this. Really my only issue was that though the spare details really added to the tone of the novel it made it hard to remember who was who in the revolving door of Gómez's interactions. You get it enough through repetition and context but a refresher every now and then would've been nice.
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February 2, 2020I got 43 pages into this book and realized that the reason I'm not reading so much this week is that I'm not motivated to read this book. The topic is interesting to me, but I don't feel that there is enough explanation at the beginning to explain the context of the raids. More, the style of narrator telling his story to someone else isn't working for me. I need quotation marks and I really don't need paragraphs that go on for four pages with no break
July 25, 2020
When the clouds of dictatorship and trauma are hung oppressively low, the humankind acts like atoms colliding in high velocity. Not even apostrophe could pass the horror of constant scrutiny; one heard whisper could mean disappearance. Guilt and ecstasy of the escapist drizzle throughout the book from the point of view of a voyeur. Incredibly strong writing, but sadly blunting towards the end of the book by its unnecessary depiction of the end story for the characters I hardly remember.
November 25, 2020
I tried to like 77 by Guillermo Saccomanno. I felt the story had a ton of potential—a queer protagonist describing the aura of fear and paranoia that saturated the time in Argentina when people were disappearing left and right. Unfortunately, the plot and narrative themselves were very scattered and slow, and I kept getting lost and finding my attention wandering off the page.
February 6, 2019
A novel of the Videla dictatorship told at arms length by Gómez, a gay high-school literature teacher, to an undisclosed listener. Gómez's dialogue of lost ("disappeared" or just plain lost) friends and students is tense, unsettling, and heartbreaking. Really good.
August 6, 2019
A dark novel, with much I just didn't understand, or come to care about.
April 3, 2020
Excelente descripción de un momento nefasto en nuestra historia.
September 19, 2020
2.5 stars. This was more political and historical than I anticipated.
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