Currently Reading: Tomas Eloy Martinez’s Santa Evita (1995)
Eva Peron began her career as a B-movie actress and ended it as a saint. In death, like many other saints, she became a relic. On the orders of the grieving dictator Juan Peron, Evita’s body was embalmed with such artistry that visitors dropped to their knees before it. When Peron fell from power, his wife’s exquisite corpse was suddenly the most precious and dangerous object in Argentina. For, as one of Peron’s enemies observed: “Every time a corpse enters the picture in this country, historyt goes mad.”
These facts are only the initial premise for this hypnotically beautiful novel by one of Argentina’s most acclaimed writers. As he follows Santa Evita through her bizarre afterlife--concealed, replicated, smuggled across an ocean, and working a deadly enchantment on her captors--Tomas Eloy Martinez weaves history, biography, and myth into a work of savage comedy and perverse eroticism.
