Hades, Argentina

A voyage to the underworld could easily become outlandish, or, conversely, too familiar - trapped in the worn formulas of myth or magical-realist tropes. In Hades, Argentina, though, 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 * Economist * Part historical novel, part ghost story, Daniel Loedel's Hades, Argentina is a debut novel as impressive as they come. Tough, wily, dreamlike, it explores the sometimes principled and sometimes dubious choices made by a small circle of friends during the Argentine military dictatorship of the late 1970s . . . spellbinding -- Seattle Times An astonishingly powerful novel about the complex nature of guilt -- Colm Tóibín, author of Brooklyn Elegant, searching . . . Amid echoes of the Orpheus myth and swirls of magic . . . a descent into an underworld of memory and brutality * O: The Oprah Magazine * A remarkable novel, as imaginatively bold as it is morally complex. It will stay with me for a very long time -- Kamila Shamsie, author of Home Fire 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 -- R. O. Kwon, author of The Incendiaries Mesmerising . . . Loedel's unflinching look at human frailty adds a revelatory new chapter to South American Cold War literature * Publishers Weekly *