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The Tunnel
  • Published: 27 June 2011
  • ISBN: 9780141964058
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 160

The Tunnel



Sabato's wonderful noir detective novel with a new introduction by Colm Toibin in Penguin Modern Classics for the first time

Infamous for the murder of Maria Iribarne, the artist Juan Pablo Castel is now writing a detailed account of his relationship with the victim from his prison cell: obsessed from the first moment he saw her examining one of his paintings, Castel had become fixated on her over the next months and fantasized over how they might meet again. When he happened upon her one day, a relationship was formed which swiftly convinced him of their mutual love. But Castel's growing paranoia would lead him to destroy the one thing he truly cared about...

Sabato's first novel El Túnel (translated as 'The Outsider' or 'The Tunnel'), written in 1948, is framed as the confession of the painter Juan Pablo Castel, who has murdered the only woman capable of understanding him. Sabato's novels were praised by authors such as Albert Camus and Graham Greene.

  • Published: 27 June 2011
  • ISBN: 9780141964058
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 160

About the author

Ernesto Sabato

Ernesto Sabato was born in Argentina in 1911. He earned a PhD in physics before relocating to Paris. After World War II, he lost faith in science and began writing fiction, although he would burn much of his work. His three published novels are The Tunnel (1948), his masterpiece On Heroes and Tombs (1961) and The Angel of Darkness (1974). He also led the commission investigating those who disappeared during Argentina's Dirty War of the 1970s. Sabato died in 2011, two months before his 100th birthday.

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Praise for The Tunnel

'An existentialist classic ... Retains a chilling, memorable power'

The New York Times Book Review

'Sabato captures the intensity of passions run into uncharted passages where love promises not tranquillity, but danger'

Los Angeles Times

Heralded by Albert Camus and Thomas Mann and widely translated, ''The Tunnel'' is the brief, obsessive, sometimes delirious confession of a convicted murderer.

Robert Coover, New York Times Book Review