What the Night Tells the Day: A Novel

by Hector Bianciotti, Linda Coverdale (Translator)

Overview

Compared to Conrad, Nabokov, and Beckett by Octavio Paz, Argentine-born Hector Bianciotti is one of the leading literary figures in his adopted homeland of France. What the Night Tells the Day, his first novel to be translated into English, is the fictionalized story of Bianciotti's youth among poor immigrant peasants in rural Argentina during the late years of the Perón regime, and a moving and sensitive portrayal of a boy's discovery of his own homosexuality.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781565842403
Publisher:	New Press, The
Publication date:	04/01/1995
Edition description:	REPRINT
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Hector Bianciotti was born in 1930 in Argentina. He left for Europe in 1955 and has lived in Paris since 1961.The author of many books, including the prizewinning Sans la Miséricorde du Christ, he is currently the literary correspondent for Le Monde.

Editorial Reviews

Bianciotti, an Argentine-born writer who writes in French, presents a novelized autobiography chronicling coming to terms with his homosexuality. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

This autobiographical novel by Le Monde's literary correspondent stems primarily from Bianciotti's sense of not belonging in the land of his birth, Argentina, as a result of the agoraphobia brought on by the endless pampas, the disdain of native Argentines for Italian immigrants, and the Peronist repression of his emerging homosexual lifestyle. While studying for the priesthood, he has a Platonic "waist-up" romance with a fellow seminarian. When he finally abandons his religious vocation and moves to Buenos Aires with neither skills nor a job, fear becomes his dominant emotion as he learns to dodge both official and unofficial police agents. The specifics of the author's participation in the repressed gay life of Buenos Aires are suggestive rather than graphic, typical of what is attractive about Bianciotti's "classic" style. Highly recommended as autobiography, Latin American cultural history (covering 1930-55), and gay studies.-Jack Shreve, Allegany Community Coll., Cumberland, Md.

Library Journal

The Argentine-born author turns from fiction to semi-autobiography in this coming-of-age story in which the narrator, growing up in the Pampas in the late years of the Peron regime, gradually discovers his homosexuality. Originally published in 1992 in France, where Bianciotti has lived since 1961, as Ce Que la Nuit Raconte au Jour. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews