Why a Booktrail?
1970s – Read in horror about a fictional account of a very real period of Argentina’s history then and realise now that mothers today still walk past the president’s residence the Casa Rosada even today.
The Ministry of Special Cases
What you need to know before your trail
The sad and haunting tale of “the disappeared” (Los Desaparecidos ) of Argentina during the 1970s.
Kaddish Poznan and his wife, Lillian are Jewish and Kaddish’s “job” is defacing gravestones in the Jewish cemetery for whores and pimps whose relatives want to erase their past and transform their identities – strong themes in the novel.
When their son is arrested, they have a battle on their hands – as no one in government or otherwise will even admit that Pato is even in custody or in fact ever existed.
Which channels do they have to go through in order to get information? Every day they must sit at the Ministry of Special Cases hoping for a hearing.
Travel Guide
The Ministry of Special Cases is a fictional account of a very real and tragic period of Argentina’s history.
The Dirty war – The horror of the Perón regime in Argentina is brought to the fore with the people of Buenos Aires fearful for the people who are going missing in and around the city. The so called Disappeared (los desaparecidos ) – people who went missing in the 1970s as the military and the government of the country tried to cover it all up. This may be a fictional account of that time but the events and emotions are evoked via the eyes of one Jewish family representative of many:
“It was 1976 in Argentina. They lived with uncertainty and looming chaos. In Buenos Aires, they’d long suffered kidnap and ransom. There was terror from all quarters and murder on the rise.”
The graveyard is a sad setting at any time but this is where we find Kaddish, a character at the start of the book chipping away at the names (and ultimately the family reputations and honour) of those in the “wrong” side of the cemetery.
This family has the misfortune to live under a government who, if you didn’t agree with what they were doing, you disappeared (there is even a verb in Spanish created for this very reason)
It’s much easier in this country to get disappeared than to stay hidden
The search for Pato starts at the Ministry of Special Cases and soon extends to a search across the city, via a myriad of characters and dangerous situations.
Where Next?
