Rodolfo Walsh - Operación Masacre is BBC R4 Book of the Week

Rodolfo Walsh - Operación Masacre is BBC R4 Book of the Week

Operation Massacre Episode 1 of 5
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b038hr2n

Availability:
5 days left to listen

Duration:
15 minutes

First broadcast:
Monday 19 August 2013

A Latin American true crime classic set in Argentina.

On the evening of the 9th June 1956 in an apartment in Buenos Aires, between twelve and fourteen men were arrested on suspicion of involvement in a rebellion against the Argentine government. A few hours later, the local police chief received orders to execute them. Almost all were innocent. In compelling prose, Rodolfo Walsh recreates the events of that night and its aftermath.

Pre-dating Capote's IN COLD BLOOD by over a decade, OPERATION MASSACRE (no touchstone) is regarded throughout Latin America as the original work of modern 'true crime.' This classic of reportage has been admired by writers a diverse as Jorge Luis Borges and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It has just been translated into English for the first time.

Read by Nigel Anthony
Abridged and produced by Jane Marshall
A Jane Marshall production for BBC Radio 4.

Operation Massacre by Rodolfo Walsh will be available through the online booksellers on August 27th in a paperback version. I see you mentioned that this is the first English language translation, which may account for the fact that I have never read anything by Walsh. However, the book sounds fascinating and I very much look forward to its arrival and of course the opportunity to read it – it is available for pre-order if anyone else is interested.

I'll have to look it up. I once fooled around with translating a story of his 'Esa Mujer/That woman'--about the whereabouts of Eva Peron's corpse. Where it is now?--I'm not sure. His letter to the military junta can be found on wikipedia. I'll see if I can link it later on. There was an Irish writer Michael McCaughan who wrote a biography about him--True Crime.

Hello GoFurther, the text I posted isn't mine - it's from the BBC website. I don't think Walsh is well known outside Argentina and I was surprised to see this on the BBC. A good introduction is at: http://www.rodolfowalsh.org/spip.php?rubrique0002

Unfortunately, my Spanish is insufficient for the article but I did find an interesting piece about Walsh in the Argentina Independent, if anyone is interested.

http://www.argentinaindependent.com/top-story/rodolfo-walsh-defender-of-free-jou...

Thanks GoFurther, I'll add that interesting link to Walsh's author page!

Operación masacre is definitely a worthwhile and engrossing read, and the English translation looks like a good one. It includes the "Open Letter to the Military Junta," along with the prologues/epilogues from the first and subsequent editions of the book. There's also an afterword by Ricardo Piglia. Glad to see this book getting its day in English.

#7--Ricardo Piglia is an excellent writer as well. I particularly like Artificial respiration and Money to burn.

Interesting stuff on the great traditions of Argentine Fiction.

Regarding Eva Peron's corpse, the late Tomas Eloy Martinez, wrote two masterpieces:

The Peron Novel
Santa Evita

i highly recommend both!

#9--Bruce--Walsh's story Esa Mujer/That woman and Eloy Martinez's novel Santa Evita have in common the same story about the disappearance of Evita Peron's corpse. Eloy Martinez in his way fleshed out Walsh's earlier story giving more detail about Evita's life. They are both well worth reading.

9: It might be worth noting that Walsh's book, and also his later work ¿Quién mató a Rosendo?, are not intended to be works of fiction, rather, "non-fiction novels." That, I think, is what's so significant about them: he's coming from a literary tradition (he wrote crime fiction and compiled the first anthology of Argentine "cuentos policiales"), but his work is more aligned with reality, with the "fusilado que vive," or, more than anything, with the truth that is stranger than fiction.

Anyway, Operación Masacre is really notable because of the way that he constructs his argument about the truth of the situation around the radio broadcast of the state of exception released by the government the night of the events in question, and how he painstakingly constructs a case against the Argentine state. It's a very

Also, if y'all are interested, Ricardo Piglia interviewed Walsh in 1973 (I don't think it's been translated, though):
http://www.rodolfowalsh.org/spip.php?article1958

#11- from your description of Walsh's "fusilado que vive" I am reminded of another fascinating book: Javier Cercas's The Anatomy of a Moment about the end of Franco's rule in Spain. A novelist's view of real events.

#11--Walsh was firstly a journalist--as far as fiction writing he's really a short story guy not a novelist per se. Operation Massacre as I've heard (and I've ordered the book) falls more under the category of true crime--like Truman Capote's In cold blood.

#11 and #12 --speaking of both Piglia's Money to burn and Cercas's entire output so far including The anatomy of a moment--they both kind of fictionalize true events which kind of puts them in the same genre as Walsh and Capote's most famous works. There is kind of a gray area here where one thing crosses into the other. The Ulsterman Eoin McNamee or the Yorkshireman David Peace or the Swedish writer Leif GW Persson pretty much work very successfully IMO in the same kind of genre. Sem-Sandberg is another one while not true crime describes the Lodz ghetto during WWII pretty much using the same literary devices.

I bought Operation Massacre earlier today, and I'll read it in October or November.

The long awaited Operation Massacre (in English) has finally arrived here today. In regards to some of the above comments, I noted that Piglia referred to it as “documentary literature” in the afterword. I’m pleased to see that it does indeed contain the Open Letter From A Writer To The Military Junta, as msjohns615 mentioned in post 7. Lacking adequate Spanish and apparently the ability to find it online in English, this will be my first opportunity to read the entire letter and of course the book.

El Nuevo Periodismo and the Dirty War by Marguerite Feitlowitz – On beloved Argentinian journalist Rodolfo Walsh.

Los Angeles Review of Books Sept 7, 2013

http://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/el-nuevo-periodismo-and-the-dirty-war

#16--Nice find. Anyway my copy showed up yesterday--currently in the middle of something else though so it will have to wait a few days.

Basically Walsh had vowed not to be taken alive. He knew he would be subject to a lot of special treatment if that happened. That's why he was armed when he was attacked. They shot him several times--he'd fired back. If I remember right he wounded one man--he was thrown in the trunk of a Ford Falcon--whether he was still alive is another question. Apparently he was dead by the time he reached his final destination--the school of Naval mechanics. The people who attacked him were Argentine Naval officers. One of them was Alfredo Astiz--an infamous torturer and murderer in the scheme of things. Argentine justice was very slow to catch up with Astiz though it finally did.

>17 lriley:
Thank you for the interesting information on Walsh, lriley!

I have not had much luck in finding a copy of True Crimes that doesn’t come with an outrageous price tag attached, i.e. up to $400 for a paperback edition. The good news is it seems that the UK publishers, Latin America Bureau, will reissue Michael McCaughan’s book although no reissue date is given. I cannot say I’m too surprised, as the BBC program on Walsh and the first English translation of Operation Massacre must have generated a lot of interest.

As you are one of the two lucky people on Librarything who actually has the book, can you tell us if Esa Mujer/That Woman is included?

#18--Had the same problem a few years ago with that McCaughan book. I put it on a wish list on Abebooks and now and again would get an e-mail from them and eventually one popped up for something like $25 and so I hopped on that. Funnily enough once in a while I still get an e-mail about one being available. Just looked anyway and there's one on Abebooks for about $150. That's real pricey. You're probably better off waiting for the re-issue. If I remember there's just bits and pieces of things that Walsh wrote--certainly nothing in its entirety. Once translated That Woman--not sure where the copy is. I don't speak Spanish--I can read it somewhat. Thinking of doing it again but if I do it will take some time. But I am retired now so...

Anyway there was another book about the Mothers of the Plaza--that gave a lot of detail about Astiz known as well by the nickname of blonde angel of death.