Ernesto Sabato (Spanish: [ˈsaβaðo]; June 24, 1911 – April 30, 2011) was an Argentine novelist, essayist, painter, and physicist. According to the BBC, he "won some of the most important prizes in Hispanic literature" and "became very influential in the literary world throughout Latin America." After his death, El País called him the "last classic writer in Argentine literature."

Sabato was known for his bald head and brush-shaped mustache. He often wore tinted glasses and open-necked shirts. He was born in Rojas, a small town in Buenos Aires Province. Sabato began his education at the Colegio Nacional de La Plata. Later, he studied physics at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, where he earned a PhD. He then studied at the Sorbonne in Paris and worked at the Curie Institute. After World War II, he lost interest in science and began writing.

Sabato’s works include three novels: El Túnel (1948), Sobre héroes y tumbas (1961), and Abaddón el exterminador (1974). The first novel received praise from well-known writers Albert Camus and Thomas Mann. The second novel is considered his masterpiece, though he almost burned it, like many of his other works. His essays covered topics such as metaphysics, politics, and tango. His writings earned him many international awards, including the Miguel de Cervantes Prize (Spain), the Legion of Honour (France), the Jerusalem Prize (Israel), and the Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger (France).

At the request of President Raúl Alfonsín, Sabato led the CONADEP Commission, which investigated the fate of people who were forced to disappear during the Dirty War of the 1970s. The findings were published in 1984 and titled Nunca Más (Never Again).

Biography

Ernesto Sabato was born in Rojas, a town in Buenos Aires Province, to Francesco Sabato and Giovanna Maria Ferrari, who were Italian immigrants from Calabria. His father was from Fuscaldo, and his mother was an Arbëreshë (an Albanian minority in Italy) from San Martino di Finita. He was the tenth of 11 children. Because his ninth brother died before him, he continued using the name "Ernesto."

In 1924, he completed primary school in Rojas and moved to La Plata for secondary education at the Colegio Nacional de La Plata. There, he met Professor Pedro Henríquez Ureña, who inspired his future writing. In 1929, he began college at the School of Physics and Mathematics at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata.

He was an active member of the Reforma Universitaria movement and helped create the "Insurrexit Group" in 1933, which supported communist ideas, along with others like Héctor P. Agosti and Ángel Hurtado de Mendoza.

In 1933, he was elected Secretario General of the Federación Juvenil Comunista (Communist Youth Federation). While attending a lecture about Marxism, he met Matilde Kusminsky Richter, who was 17 years old. She left her parents' home to live with Sabato.

In 1934, he began to doubt communism and Joseph Stalin’s regime. The Communist Party of Argentina noticed this and sent him to the International Lenin School in Moscow for two years. Sabato later described the school as a place where people either recovered or faced harsh consequences, such as being sent to a gulag or a psychiatric hospital. Before going to Moscow, he traveled to Brussels as a delegate from the Communist Party of Argentina at the "Congress against Fascism and the War." Fearing he might not return from Moscow, he left the congress and went to Paris. There, he wrote his first novel, La Fuente Muda, which was never published. He returned to Buenos Aires in 1936 and married Matilde Kusminsky Richter.

In 1938, he earned a PhD in physics from the Universidad Nacional de La Plata. With the help of Bernardo Houssay, he received a research fellowship in atomic radiation at the Curie Institute in Paris. On May 25, 1938, his first son, Jorge Federico Sabato, was born. While in France, he connected with the surrealist movement and studied the works of artists like Oscar Domínguez and Roberto Matta Echaurren. This experience deeply influenced his future writing.

During this time, he spent mornings working with scientific tools and evenings with surrealists in Paris. He often spent time in places like the Dome and the Deux Magots, creating art with other artists.

In 1939, he moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1940, he returned to Argentina, determined to leave physics behind. However, he had to teach at the Universidad de La Plata for Engineering admission and for graduate courses in relativity and quantum mechanics to fulfill his obligation to those who funded his fellowship. In 1943, after an "existential crisis," he left science permanently to focus on writing and painting.

At the Curie Institute, he felt a deep sense of emptiness despite achieving a major goal for a physicist. He continued working out of habit, but his soul rejected this.

In 1945, his second son, Mario Sabato, was born.

In 1941, Sabato published his first literary work, an article about La invención de Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares, in the magazine Teseo from La Plata. He also collaborated with Pedro Henríquez Ureña in the well-known magazine Sur.

In 1942, while working for Sur magazine reviewing books, he was assigned to lead the "Calendario" section and participated in "Desagravio a Borges" in Sur nº 94. He also wrote articles for La Nación and translated The Birth and Death of the Sun by George Gamow. The next year, he translated The ABC of Relativity by Bertrand Russell.

In 1945, his first book, Uno y el Universo, a collection of essays criticizing the moral neutrality of science and warning about dehumanization in technological societies, was published. Over time, his views shifted toward libertarian and humanist ideas. That same year, he won a prize from the city of Buenos Aires for his book and received an honor from the Sociedad Argentina de Escritores.

In 1948, after being rejected by several Buenos Aires publishers, Sabato published his first novel, El túnel, in Sur magazine. This psychological novel, told from the first-person perspective, was framed in existentialism and received praise from Albert Camus, who arranged for a French translation by Gallimard. The book was later translated into more than 10 languages. Thomas Mann also praised the work.

France’s literary industry named Sabato’s book Abaddon, el Exterminador (The Angel of Darkness) the best foreign book of 1976.

His eldest son, Jorge, died at age 56 on February 10, 1995, in a car accident. In 1998, Sabato’s wife died.

In 1999, Sabato acquired Italian citizenship in addition to his Argentine nationality.

Sabato died in Santos Lugares on April 30, 2011, two months before his 100th birthday. His death was caused by bronchitis, according to his companion and collaborator Elvira González Fraga. The Spanish newspaper El Mundo described him as "the last surviving Argentine writer with a capital W."

Political activism and ideology

Ernesto Sabato was a young member of the Communist Party of Argentina, where he became the leader of the Communist Youth Federation. In an interview with Spanish journalist Joaquín Soler Serrano on the television program A fondo (1977), Sabato shared that he lost faith in the policies of Joseph Stalin after attending a meeting of young communists in Paris before World War II. He later stopped supporting Marxist communism because of the actions of Stalin’s government in the Soviet Union.

Sabato criticized Peronism, a political movement in Argentina. In 1956, he wrote an essay titled El otro rostro del peronismo, in which he strongly opposed Peronism. He wrote that resentment from groups like Indigenous people, gauchos, immigrants, and workers formed the core of Peronism. He described Colonel Perón as someone who used people’s anger and frustrations to gain power.

Although Sabato criticized Peronism, he praised Eva Perón, calling her the "true revolutionary." Later, he refused to publish El otro rostro del peronismo again. In 1987, when his complete works were published, he included the essay in a new volume of political writings, but it was never released.

Sabato wrote about the 1955 revolution that removed Perón from power. He described seeing servants cry silently during the event, which made him realize that the revolution was not as pure as some texts claimed. He believed it was a messy, real historical event.

In 1966, Sabato supported General Juan Carlos Onganía after he removed President Arturo Illia from power. He said, "We must understand that institutions no one believed in have ended. Do you believe in the Chamber of Deputies?" This statement was notable because the Argentine Revolution dictatorship was known for harshly treating writers and scientists. Sabato did not comment on the Night of the Long Batons, an attack on the University of Buenos Aires that forced many academics into exile.

During the government of María Estela Martínez de Perón, Sabato felt threatened by the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance. He still published the essay Nuestro tiempo del desprecio and wrote about repression in other countries. In 1976, newspapers recorded his statement about a "witch-hunt" involving people like Antonio Di Benedetto and Jorge Hardoy, who were expelled from their jobs or detained.

In 1976, dictator Jorge Rafael Videla invited Sabato and other intellectuals, including Jorge Luis Borges, to a luncheon. Sabato later said that the conversation with Videla focused on culture, history, and media, and that they respected each other. He described Videla as a cultured, modest, and intelligent man. Writer Osvaldo Bayer later claimed Sabato tried to justify the meeting by saying he cared about colleagues who disappeared, but others disagreed.

In 1979, Sabato published Apologías y rechazos, a book that challenged censorship. In 1980, he signed a letter in the newspaper Clarín, demanding information about people who disappeared during the National Reorganization Process.

After the dictatorship, Sabato led the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (CONADEP), which investigated human rights abuses in Argentina from 1976 to 1983. The commission’s findings were published in Nunca Más, a report that documented disappearances, torture, and killings. In 1984, Sabato presented the report to President Raúl Alfonsín. Human rights groups organized a demonstration with about 70,000 people to support the report.

The report described the "two demons" theory, stating that Argentina faced terror from both the far-right and far-left during the 1970s, but the military responded with even worse violence. The report helped lead to the Trial of the Juntas. Sabato later criticized the pardons given to some military leaders in 1989.

In his later writings, Sabato described himself as a Christian anarchist. He said, "Anarchism has always seemed to me a path toward social justice with full freedom." He acknowledged that he had once been a communist activist but believed anarchism offered a better way to achieve fairness and freedom.