Reviews of Hades, Argentina by Daniel Loedel

Hades, Argentina

by Daniel Loedel

Hades, Argentina by Daniel Loedel X
Hades, Argentina by Daniel Loedel
  • Critics' Opinion:

    Readers' Opinion:

     Not Yet Rated
  • First Published:
    Jan 2021, 304 pages

    Paperback:
    Jan 2022, 304 pages

    Genres

  • Rate this book


Book Reviewed by:
Kim Kovacs
Buy This Book

About this Book

Book Summary

A decade after fleeing for his life, a man is pulled back to Argentina by an undying love.

In 1976, Tomás Orilla is a medical student in Buenos Aires, where he has moved in hopes of reuniting with Isabel, a childhood crush. But the reckless passion that has long drawn him is leading Isabel ever deeper into the ranks of the insurgency fighting an increasingly oppressive regime. Tomás has always been willing to follow her anywhere, to do anything to prove himself. Yet what exactly is he proving, and at what cost to them both?

It will be years before a summons back arrives for Tomás, now living as Thomas Shore in New York. It isn't a homecoming that awaits him, however, so much as an odyssey into the past, an encounter with the ghosts that lurk there, and a reckoning with the fatal gap between who he has become and who he once aspired to be. Raising profound questions about the sometimes impossible choices we make in the name of love, Hades, Argentina is a gripping, ingeniously narrated literary debut.

One

I'd spent eight years officially disappeared. At least as far as I knew; I hadn't been back to Argentina since '76, and even after the ostensible resumption of democracy in '83, no one from the government ever managed to confirm my existence. Only in the ninth year, when I married an American and had to get certain papers in order for my green card, did Tomás Orilla return to documented being.

But the interval in between wasn't merely a bureaucratic absence. I'd shut myself off completely until I met my wife, and even then—by our first anniversary, I was already sleeping on the couch. The affair was hers, but the fault, I acknowledged tacitly, was mine. I'd never been truly present. Kind and available, yes. Committed too. Even making plans for the long term—a joint savings account, my citizenship application, and, most recently, conversations about children. But it was always an effort, a mask I put on. If I blamed Claire for anything, it was that she saw it for ...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

BookBrowse Review

BookBrowse

Hades, Argentina isn't a fast read, but that's partly because Loedel's prose is often so achingly beautiful that one must pause to simply appreciate his gorgeous writing. It's one of those rare books that gets under your skin and haunts you for a long time after you turn the last page. It's one of the best novels I've read in recent years, and one I recommend highly for those who feel they can comfortably engage with the subject matter...continued

Full Review (721 words).

This review is available to non-members for a limited time. For full access, become a member today.

(Reviewed by Kim Kovacs).

Media Reviews

O, the Oprah Magazine
Elegant, searching...Amid echoes of the Orpheus myth and swirls of magic...a descent into an underworld of memory and brutality.

Seattle Times
The dark enchantments and increasing menace of Hades, Argentina were inspired, Loedel tells us, by the disappearance of his 22-year-old half-sister in 1978 after she joined the resistance against the regime. Loedel himself, born in 1988, is too young to have direct memories of the eras he depicts. But the tangles of action, intention and self-deception he evokes are spellbinding in ways that will hit home in any society where democracy, the rule of law and the very concept of the truth are in peril.

The Economist
Powerful...The plain delicacy of Mr Loedel’s prose suits not only the horror of his subject, but also his novel’s risky premise...hell is at once metaphor and setting, literary conceit and emotional reality. Tomas's sojourn there is a fittingly moving tribute to the author’s sister and her many fellow victims.

New York Times
Hades, Argentina can feel dutiful, even workmanlike in places as it catalogs the depravities of the regimes...Loedel will learn from this novel, and I suspect that he will approach his next book with a greater sense of freedom. Perhaps he will show us more of that bleak, serious comedy he writes so well.

Booklist (starred review)
[A] haunting story about repression and the vulnerability of youth...A devastating reminder of the tragic costs of politics made personal.

Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
A complex and intimate meditation on love, guilt, and the decisions that haunt us forever.

Library Journal (starred review)
A powerful and complex novel, told in hallucinatory prose that challenges us to work out what is real vs. what is imagined. Recommended for all literary fiction collections.

Publishers Weekly
[M]esmerizing...Loedel's unflinching look at human frailty adds a revelatory new chapter to South American Cold War literature.

Author Blurb Colm Tóibín, author of Brooklyn and Nora Webster
An astonishingly powerful novel about the complex nature of guilt.

Author Blurb Dinaw Mengestu, author of All Our Names
A remarkable novel, personal and political, elegiac and intimate, with a tenderness and wisdom evident in every passage. A beautiful book.

Author Blurb Francisco Cantú, author of The Line Becomes A River
A stunning descent into the haze of memory and history. In his interrogation of complicity and violence, Loedel explores how institutionalized evil disappears humans not only from the physical world, but from their own souls as well.

Author Blurb Juan Gabriel Vásquez, author of The Sound of Things Falling
Loedel writes in the venerable Argentinian tradition of mixing the political and the supernatural, but his novel comes from a different language and a new sensibility. It took me to places I had never visited before.

Author Blurb R. O. Kwon, author of The Incendiaries
Strange, gorgeous, and terrifying—a book for the grievers, and for those of us who wish we could turn back time to remedy past mistakes—and so, for all of us.

Reader Reviews

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Beyond the Book

Operation Condor

Black and white photo of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in military regaliaThe action in Daniel Loedel's debut novel, Hades, Argentina, is propelled by a clandestine South American military campaign known as Operation Condor.

Operation Condor's roots can be traced back to the mid-1960s, when Che Guevara left Cuba to spread socialist doctrine throughout South America, advocating the violent overthrow of the continent's corrupt, U.S.-backed anti-communist dictatorships. Although Guevara was killed in Bolivia in 1967, his ideas had gained a foothold, resulting in a period of unrest. Across the continent, dictators were replaced by socialist-leaning leaders, some via coup, some through democratic election. The U.S. government wished to prevent the spread of communism (and was not scrupulous about differentiating ...

This "beyond the book" feature is available to non-members for a limited time. Join today for full access.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

If you liked Hades, Argentina, try these:

  • Call Me Cassandra jacket

    Call Me Cassandra

    by Marcial Gala

    Published 2023

    About this book

    More by this author

    From Marcial Gala, the author of the award-winning The Black Cathedral, Call Me Cassandra is a darkly magical tale of a haunted young dreamer, born in the wrong body and time, who believes himself to be a doomed prophetess from ancient Greek mythology.

  • Infinite Country jacket

    Infinite Country

    by Patricia Engel

    Published 2021

    About this book

    More by this author

    For readers of Valeria Luiselli and Edwidge Danticat, an urgent and lyrical novel about a Colombian family fractured by deportation, offering an intimate perspective on an experience that so many have endured - and are enduring right now.

We have 7 read-alikes for Hades, Argentina, but non-members are limited to two results. To see the complete list of this book's read-alikes, you need to be a member.
Search read-alikes
How we choose read-alikes
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Become a Member

Join BookBrowse today to start discovering exceptional books!

Find out more


Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: Daughter in Exile
    Daughter in Exile
    by Bisi Adjapon
    In Bisi Adjapon's Daughter in Exile, main character Lola is a Ghanaian who lands in New York City in...
  • Book Jacket
    The Correspondents
    by Judith Mackrell
    In the introduction to The Correspondents, author Judith Mackrell points out that although there had...
  • Book Jacket: Exiles
    Exiles
    by Jane Harper
    Our First Impressions readers were thrilled to return to the world of Jane Harper's protagonist ...
  • Book Jacket: Spice Road
    Spice Road
    by Maiya Ibrahim
    Imani is a Shield, a warrior who is renowned for her fighting abilities and for her iron dagger, ...

Book Club Discussion

Book Jacket
The Nurse's Secret
by Amanda Skenandore
A fascinating historical novel based on the little-known story of America's first nursing school.

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    The Mostly True Story of Tanner & Louise
    by Colleen Oakley

    A “wildly surprising, entertaining ride of a novel.”
    —Jodi Picoult

  • Book Jacket

    Once We Were Home
    by Jennifer Rosner

    From the author of The Yellow Bird Sings, a novel based on the true stories of children stolen in the wake of World War II.

Win This Book
Win Last House Before the Mountain

Last House Before the Mountain by Monika Helfer

A spellbinding, internationally bestselling family saga set in a fractured rural village in WWI Austria.

Enter

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

R Peter T P P

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.