Requiem for a Lost Country

Tomás Eloy Martínez was born in San Miguel de Tucumán, Argentina on July 16, 1934. He received an undergraduate degree in Spanish and Latin American literature from the National University of Tucumán and a master's degree from the University of Paris. He was a novelist, journalist, essayist and critic. In the early 1970s, he conducted long show more interviews with Juan Domingo Perón in Madrid, where the general was living in exile. In 1975, while eating lunch in a Buenos Aires restaurant, he received word that when he stepped outside, he would be assassinated by a right-wing paramilitary group. Since there was no back door, he decided to document his own murder and phoned his newspaper requesting a photographer. When a swarm of photographers descended, the assassins scattered. He fled the country and eventually ended up in the United States, where he taught at the University of Maryland in the mid-1980s. His works include The Perón Novel (La Novela de Perón), Santa Evita, and The Tango Singer (El Cantor de Tango). He taught at Rutgers University from 1995 until his death. He died as the result of a brain tumor on January 31, 2010 at the age of 75. (Bowker Author Biography) show less