Confession

Brutal and overwhelming, Confession wrestles with the legacy of Argentina’s past and the passions of one young girl.There are mysteries in the world of man, just as there are in the Kingdom of God, and that they too, albeit quite differently, are unfathomable.When Mirta López looks out the dining room window, she sees a slim, self-possessed older boy on his way back from school. It’s 1941 in provincial Argentina, and the sight of the Videla’s eldest son has awakened in her the first uncertain, unnerving vibrations of desire. Naturally, she confesses. But she cannot stop herself. Thirty years later, Videla is a general, leading the ruling military junta, and a cell of young revolutionaries plot an ingenious attack on him, and the regime. Writing from the present into the past, Martín Kohan maps the contours of Argentina’s 20th Century, but finds his center in one woman—devout, headstrong, lit up with ideas of right and wrong—not the grand historical figures of her lifetime’s omnipresent, brutalizing history. “There is an art to keeping lives constant, not allowing them to be altered by facts that are merely external.” And there is great beauty in Confession , its decades and landscapes, and the legacy of love and guilt playing out in one family and against the background of dictatorship’s traumas.

"A stupendous novel." —El País"One of Argentina’s greatest living writers." —La gaceta literaria"A fantastic writer whose texts question established ideas." —Letras Libres**********Praise for Martín Kohan"The worthy successor of Borges, Sábato and Bioy Casares." —Le Devoir

Martín Kohan was born in Buenos Aires in 1967. He teaches Literary Theory at the University of Buenos Aires. To date, he has published several books of essays and short stories, and seven novels. His work has appeared with publishers of great prestige in Europe such as Anagrama (Spain), Einaudi (Italy), Seuil (France) and Suhrkamp (Germany). The 25th Premio Herralde de Novela awarded to Ciencias Morales (Moral Sciences ) consecrated him as one of the most important authors in today’s international literary panorama.Daniel Hahn is a writer, editor and translator with over one hundred books to his name. His translations (from Portuguese, Spanish and French) include fiction from Europe, Africa and the Americas and non-fiction by writers ranging from Portuguese Nobel laureate José Saramago to Brazilian footballer Pelé. Recent books include the new Oxford Companion to Children's Literature and translations of Julián Fuks’ Resistance and Occupation . He is a former chair of the Society of Authors and is presently on the board of a number of organisations that deal with literature, literacy, translation and free expression. In 2021 Daniel was made an OBE for his services to literature.