La Ciudad Ausente

The Absent City takes the form of a futuristic detective novel In the end however it is a meditation on the nature of totalitarian regimes on the transition to democracy after the end of such regimes and on the power of language to create and define reality Ricardo Piglia combines his trademark avantgarde aesthetics with cultural and political insights into Argentina s history and contemporary condition in this work The novel follows Junior a reporter for a daily Buenos Aires newspaper as he attempts to locate a secret machine that contains the mind and the memory of a woman named Elena While Elena produces stories that reflect on actual events in Argentina the police are seeking her destruction because of the revelations of atrocities that shethe machineis disseminating through texts and taped recordings The book thus portrays the race to recover the history and memory of a city and a country where history has largely been obliterated by political repression Its narrativesall part of a detective story all part of something moremultiply as they intersect with each other like the streets and avenues of Buenos Aires itself