The Suicides [Paperback]

A reporter embarks on an investigation of a string of unconnected suicides—which then leads into an exploration of the phenomenon of suicide itself—in this elegant existential novel, the third and final volume of Antonio Di Benedetto’s Trilogy of Expectation.

A stymied reporter in his early thirties embarks on an investigation of three unconnected suicides. All he has to go on are photos of the faces of the dead. Other suicides begin to proliferate, while a colleague in the archives sends him historical justifications of self-murder by thinkers of all sorts: Diogenes, David Hume, Emile Durkheim, Margaret Mead. His investigation becomes an obsession, and he finds himself ever more attracted to its subject as it proceeds.

The Suicides is the third volume of Antonio Di Benedetto’s Trilogy of Expectation, a touchstone for Roberto Bolaño and deemed “one of the culminating moments of twentieth-century fiction” by Juan José Saer. Following Zama (set during the eighteenth century) and The Silentiary (set during the 1950s), this final work takes place in a provincial city in the late 1960s, as Argentina plummets toward the “Dirty War.” Di Benedetto can be seen as a bridge from the magic of García Márquez to the realism of Bolaño and the generation of Latin American writers that succeeded him. —Michael Greenberg, New York Times

Di Benedetto’s books are compact, existential allegories of estrangement and longing. They are about misanthropic yet disarmingly vulnerable men who are marooned on the periphery of society—'ready to go,' as one of them thinks, 'and not going.' —Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal

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