The End of the Story

Book excerpt: "Liliana Heker is one of the most remarkable voices of the Argentinean generation after Borges ... her fiction chronicles the small tragedies that take place within the vast tragedy of our history. A universal and indispensable writer." - Alberto Manguel When Diana Glass witnesses Leonora's abduction from a street in Buenos Aires, she despairs that her friend has joined the ranks of los desaparaecidos, the missing ones. She begins to write the story of their friendship, but certain memories, details, and whispered allegations about Leonora's fate consistently intrude. Leonora was born to drink life down to the bottom of the glass. But, Diana wonders, is that necessarily a virtue? Gripping, intelligent, and intricately structured, Liliana Heker's novel of an unstable revolutionary pasionaria has inflamed readers across Latin America. The End of the Story is a shocking study of the pyschology of torture, and a tragic portrait of Argentina's Dirty War.