Hades, Argentina

'An astonishingly powerful novel about the complex nature of guilt' Colm Toibin

'Remarkable . . . It will stay with me for a very long time' Kamila Shamsie

A decade after fleeing for his life, a man is pulled back to Argentina by an undying love.

In 1976, Tomas Orilla is a medical student in Buenos Aires, where he has moved in hopes of reuniting with Isabel, a childhood crush. But the reckless passion that has long drawn him is leading Isabel ever deeper into the ranks of the insurgency fighting an increasingly oppressive regime. Tomas has always been willing to follow her anywhere, to do anything to prove himself. Yet what exactly is he proving, and at what cost to them both?

It will be years before a summons back arrives for Tomas, now living as Thomas Shore in New York. It isn't a homecoming that awaits him, however, so much as an odyssey into the past, an encounter with the ghosts that lurk there and a reckoning with the fatal gap between who he has become and who he once aspired to be. Raising profound questions about the sometimes impossible choices we make in the name of love, Hades, Argentina is a gripping, ingeniously narrated literary debut.

“Strange, gorgeous and terrifying - a book for the grievers, and for those of us who wish we could turn back time to remedy past mistakes - and so, for all of us A remarkable novel, personal and political, elegiac and intimate, with a tenderness and wisdom evident in every passage. A beautiful book A stunning descent into the haze of memory and history. In his interrogation of complicity and violence, Loedel explores how institutionalized evil disappears humans not only from the physical world, but from their own souls as well Hades, Argentina brilliantly explores the fault lines between heroism and complicity, guilt and trauma, and love and betrayal. Daniel Loedel has written a haunting and beautiful novel”

A voyage to the underworld could easily become outlandish, or, conversely, too familiar - trapped in the worn formulas of myth or magical-realist tropes. In Hades, Argentina, though, hell is at once metaphor and setting, literary conceit and emotional reality. Tomas's sojourn there is a fittingly moving tribute to the author's sister and her many fellow victims Economist
Part historical novel, part ghost story, Daniel Loedel's Hades, Argentina is a debut novel as impressive as they come. Tough, wily, dreamlike, it explores the sometimes principled and sometimes dubious choices made by a small circle of friends during the Argentine military dictatorship of the late 1970s . . . spellbinding -- Seattle Times
An astonishingly powerful novel about the complex nature of guilt -- Colm Tóibín, author of Brooklyn
Elegant, searching . . . Amid echoes of the Orpheus myth and swirls of magic . . . a descent into an underworld of memory and brutality O: The Oprah Magazine
A remarkable novel, as imaginatively bold as it is morally complex. It will stay with me for a very long time -- Kamila Shamsie, author of Home Fire
Strange, gorgeous, and terrifying - a book for the grievers, and for those of us who wish we could turn back time to remedy past mistakes - and so, for all of us -- R. O. Kwon, author of The Incendiaries
Mesmerising . . . Loedel's unflinching look at human frailty adds a revelatory new chapter to South American Cold War literature Publishers Weekly

Daniel Loedel is a book editor. For years, he lived in Buenos Aires, where he worked as a translator.

'An astonishingly powerful novel about the complex nature of guilt' Colm Toibin 'Remarkable . . . It will stay with me for a very long time' Kamila Shamsie A decade after fleeing for his life, a man is pulled back to Argentina by an undying love. In 1976, Tomas Orilla is a medical student in Buenos Aires, where he has moved in hopes of reuniting with Isabel, a childhood crush. But the reckless passion that has long drawn him is leading Isabel ever deeper into the ranks of the insurgency fighting an increasingly oppressive regime. Tomas has always been willing to follow her anywhere, to do anything to prove himself. Yet what exactly is he proving, and at what cost to them both?It will be years before a summons back arrives for Tomas, now living as Thomas Shore in New York. It isn't a homecoming that awaits him, however, so much as an odyssey into the past, an encounter with the ghosts that lurk there and a reckoning with the fatal gap between who he has become and who he once aspired to be. Raising profound questions about the sometimes impossible choices we make in the name of love, Hades, Argentina is a gripping, ingeniously narrated literary debut.

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