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by Haroldo Conti (Author)
'Neither the old man nor Boga ever said more than was needed. And yet they understood each other perfectly.'
Over the course of a season, Boga and the old man work side by side on the sandbanks of the Paraná Delta, cutting reeds to sell to local basketweavers. But when the old man falls sick and dies, Boga abandons himself entirely to the river and the life of solitary drifting he has long yearned for.
Echoes of John Berger sound throughout the evocative prose of this great Argentinian writer. A twentieth-century classic, Southeaster is a central work in Haroldo Conti's oeuvre.
Author Biography
Haroldo Conti was born in the province of Buenos Aires in 1925. He studied at a Salesian school and a Jesuit seminary before graduating with a degree in philosophy from the University of Buenos Aires. In his professional life, Conti was variously employed as an actor, bank clerk, Latin teacher and screenwriter.
Conti was arrested in his apartment after the military coup of 1976, and is currently included on the list of permanently disappeared. After the publication of Southeaster in 1962, he went on to write three more novels as well as several short story collections. He is the recipient of several important literary prizes, including the Casa de las Américas Prize. Jon Lindsay Miles works in southern Spain, also publishing as Immigrant Press. The translation of Conti's Southeaster (2013) followed a hybrid guide-novel of Úbeda (Along the Way. Walking in Úbeda, 2009) and a bilingual collection of mediated stories of migration (Desde las Américas a Jaén/From the Americas to Jaén, 2011). He pays for this life by teaching English conversation at an outpost of the University of Jaén.
