Mario Benedetti – författare

'Perhaps that moment had been exceptional, but still, I felt alive. That pressure on my chest means being alive.'Forty-nine, with a kind face, no serious ailments (apart from varicose veins on his ankles), a good salary and three moody children, widowed accountant Martín Santomé is about to retire. He assumes he'll take up gardening, or the guitar, or whatever retired people do. What he least expects is to fall passionately in love with his shy young employee Laura Avellaneda. As they embark upon an affair, happy and irresponsible, Martín begins to feel the weight of his quiet existence lift - until, out of nowhere, their joy is cut short. The intimate, heartbreaking diary of an ordinary man who is reborn when he falls in love one final time, this beloved Latin American novel has been translated into twenty languages and sold millions of copies worldwide, and is now published in Penguin Classics for the first time.

'Perhaps that moment had been exceptional, but still, I felt alive. That pressure on my chest means being alive.'Forty-nine, with a kind face, no serious ailments (apart from varicose veins on his ankles), a good salary and three moody children, widowed accountant Martín Santomé is about to retire. He assumes he'll take up gardening, or the guitar, or whatever retired people do. What he least expects is to fall passionately in love with his shy young employee Laura Avellaneda. As they embark upon an affair, happy and irresponsible, Martín begins to feel the weight of his quiet existence lift - until, out of nowhere, their joy is cut short. The intimate, heartbreaking diary of an ordinary man who is reborn when he falls in love one final time, this beloved Latin American novel has been translated into twenty languages and sold millions of copies worldwide, and is now published in Penguin Classics for the first time.

An extraordinary story of love and exile, from one of the great masters of the Latin American novel'Having news from you is like opening a window'Santiago is trapped. Taken political prisoner in Montevideo after a brutal military coup, he can do nothing but write letters to his family, and try to stay sane. Far away in a different country, his father tries to adjust to life in exile, his daughter marvels at the big city, and his beautiful, careworn wife finds herself irresistibly drawn to another man, as day by day Santiago edges closer to freedom. Told with tenderness and fury through the voices of a family torn apart by history, Springtime in a Broken Mirror asks whether shattered lives can ever truly be mended. 'A masterful novel ... a remarkable collage of unique perspectives - or shards from that eponymous broken mirror' The National

Santiago is trapped. Taken political prisoner in Montevideo after a brutal military coup, he can do nothing but write letters to his family, and try to stay sane. Far away, his nine-year-old daughter Beatrice wonders at the marvels of 1970s Buenos Aires, but her grandpa and mother - Santiago's beautiful, careworn wife, Graciela - struggle to adjust to a life in exile. Graciela fights to retain the fiery passion that suffused her marriage, her politics, her whole life, as day by day Santiago edges closer to freedom. But Santiago's rakish, reckless best friend is a constant, brooding presence in the exiles' lives, and Graciela finds herself drawn irresistibly towards him. A lucid, heart-wrenching saga of a family torn apart by the forces of history, Springtime in a Broken Mirror tells with tenderness and fury of the indelible imprint politics leaves on individual lives. Generous and unflinching, it asks whether the broken bonds of family and history can ever truly be mended.

'This novel is a jewel ... one of those books that enters the soul, which it is impossible not to be conquered by. It is a masterpiece like few others' Huffington PostMiguel and Alicia fall quietly in love as teenagers, walking back from school together. When Lucas - enigmatic, charismatic - arrives, everything changes, and Miguel is certain he has lost Alicia. Yet, against the odds, she marries him. Now, eleven years later, their marriage has begun to fray, and Alicia sets out to see Lucas again. As each member of this strange love triangle tells their side of what happened, an unforgettable story of desire, deception and tragic misunderstanding unfolds.

'This novel is a jewel ... one of those books that enters the soul, which it is impossible not to be conquered by. It is a masterpiece like few others' Huffington PostMiguel and Alicia fall quietly in love as teenagers, walking back from school together. When Lucas - enigmatic, charismatic - arrives, everything changes, and Miguel is certain he has lost Alicia. Yet, against the odds, she marries him. Now, eleven years later, their marriage has begun to fray, and Alicia sets out to see Lucas again. As each member of this strange love triangle tells their side of what happened, an unforgettable story of desire, deception and tragic misunderstanding unfolds.

"It gives me great pleasure to see the work of Benedetti, one of the great poets of our language, made available to US readers in Popkin's wonderful translations. Her carefully crafted adaptations of Mario's poems convey all the wisdom, nostalgia, and irony that inform his verses in language that retains their musicality. Anyone who has translated poetry will appreciate what an accomplishment that represents."--Claribel Alegria Mario Benedetti (1920--2009) is regarded as one of Latin America's most important twentieth-century writers and one of Uruguay's most revered writers of novels, short stories, poetry, plays, and essays.

De las varias y buenas novelas de Mario Benedetti, LA TREGUA es la que ha alcanzado mayor favor del publico. La cotidianidad gris y rutinaria marcada por la frustracion y la ausencia de perspectivas de la clase media urbana impregna las paginas de esta novela, que, adoptando la forma de un diario personal, relata un breve periodo de la vida de un empleado viudo, proximo a la jubilacion, cuya existencia se divide entre la oficina, la casa, el cafe y una precaria vida familiar dominada por una dificil relacion con unos hijos ya adultos. Una inesperada relacion amorosa, que parece ofrecer al protagonista un horizonte de liberacion y felicidad personal, se abrira como una tregua en su lucha cotidiana contra el tedio, la soledad y el paso del tiempo.

Autor de novelas, cuentos y piezas teatrales, Mario Benedetti ocupa también un lugar relevante en el ámbito de la poesía, en el que parte de sus creaciones se han convertido en canción popular. La voluntaria aproximación a la prosa, la construcción de una "épica de lo cotidiano" propiciada por la incorporación de lo social y lo político, el amor y el humor son algunos de los ejes en torno a los cuales giran los versos del gran escritor uruguayo. La presente ANTOLOGÍA POÉTICA, seleccionada por él mismo y presentada por Pedro de Orgambide, constituye una muestra panorámica y difícilmente mejorable de lo más sustancial y conocido de sus versos.

En "Pedro y el Capitán" (1979), tenso diálogo entre víctima y verdugo que se desarrolla en una sala de interrogatorios, el escritor uruguayo Mario Benedetti aborda «una indagación dramática en la psicología de un torturador» a la que una objetividad rigurosa aleja del maniqueísmo. «Esta pieza dramática -advierte el autor en el prólogo- no escenifica el enfrentamiento de un monstruo y un santo [...]. La distancia entre uno y otro es, sobre todo, ideológica; y es quizá ahí donde reside la clave de otras diferencias, que abarcan la moral, el ánimo, la sensibilidad ante el dolor humano, el complejo trayecto que media entre el coraje y la cobardía, la poca o mucha capacidad de sacrificio, la brecha entre traición y libertad.»

Ambientados en el medio urbano de Montevideo, pero tambien en Paris, Buenos Aires o Madrid los cincuenta y tres Cuentos de esta antologia, seleccionados por el propio autor, giran en torno a una doble vertiente: la cotidiana peripecia de la pequena burguesia ciudadana -funcionarios publicos, empleados de banca, periodistas deportivos- que anima la vida de la capital, y los estigmas de quienes sufrieron la dictadura civico-militar en Uruguay entre 1973 y 1985. Con una prosa cargada de ironia, sobria y precisa, Mario Benedetti logra trascender la individualidad de sus modestos personajes, inmersos en existencias grises siempre acechadas por posibilidades dramaticas, para ofrecer al lector un cuadro veraz y complejo de la sociedad contemporanea.

Pieza fundamental de la narrativa de Mario Benedetti, "Gracias por el fuego" novela una historia de frustraciones: la frustración de un asesinato y una frustración personal que es a la vez reflejo de la frustración general en que se mueve un país. El fracaso de Ramón Budiño, que planea primero el asesinato de su padre y se reconoce después incapaz de llevarlo a cabo, se debe en buena medida a la actitud general de una sociedad que no tolera gestos dramáticos. Sin embargo, el radical desacomodo de clase, creencias, sentimientos, profesión y memoria del protagonista juega también un papel decisivo en el drama. De esta forma, la crisis social y política del país y la crisis personal del frustrado asesino confluyen en el trágico desenlace de esta novela.