Autorentext

OSVALDO SORIANO (1943-1997) was an important Argentinian journalist and novelist. He joined the news daily La Opinión when it was founded in 1971 by Jacobo Timerman. During Soriano's days as a staff writer, there were various clampdowns on political opinion, and after six months when none of his articles had been accepted, he began writing a story in which a character named Osvaldo Soriano reconstructs the life of the English actor Stan Laurel. This work became his first novel, Triste, solitario y final (Sad, Lonely and Final, 1973) a parody on cinematic themes set in Los Angeles with the fictional detective Philip Marlowe as his joint investigator. Raymond Chandler's famous hard-boiled writing style -- which Soriano studied and translated -- plus his love of movies helped Soriano develop his own writing style, learning dialogue, how to pace a story, and slapstick humour from the big screen. La Opinión became a prominent government critic and revealed the growing horrors of the Dirty War. Jacobo Timerman and other staff members began to be abducted, and after March 1976, when the Argentinian military seized power, Soriano made his way to Belgium, where he met his wife Catherine, and then to Paris, where he lived in exile until 1984. While in France he became a friend of another Argentinian exile Julio Cortázar, with whom he founded a short-lived monthly magazine Sin censura. After the fall of the military junta in 1983, Osvaldo Soriano returned to Buenos Aires. His novels written in exile began to be published inside Argentina -- selling over 100,000 copies apiece in a country where 1500 copies puts a book on the best-seller list. His journalism written after his return, mostly for the new publication Pagina 12 was seen as important in helping his fellow Argentinians recover a sense of decency and pride as the country struggled to emerge from its recent bloody past.

Klappentext

In Winter Quarters two performers past their prime have come to the provincial town of Colonia Vela, the setting of A Funny Dirty Little War, to open a local festival. Strangers to each other, this worn-out boxer and has-been tango singer become loyal friends -- even unto death. The boxer has been selected to fight the local hero, the army's champ who has national ambitions. It soon becomes clear that the town vigilantes and military toughs don't mean for any trophies -- or the mayor's daughter -- to go to these "losers". As the underdogs try to go the distance, Soriano's gritty, Chandleresque prose builds a harrowing picture of a society in the grip of a bizarre and terrifying struggle.