Requiem for a Woman's Soul

[10], 116, [2] pages. Translated from the Spanish. Inscription by the author (in Spanish) on the front free endpaper. DJ has some edge creasing. Omar Rivabella is an Argentinean writer and journalist. A strong advocate of human rights, he is the author of several essays and short stories published in Latin America. Between 1980 and 1983, he wrote three weekly columns for El Diario in New York City. His articles have also appeared in several American publications. In a backwater town in an unnamed Latin American country, a priest comes upon the harrowing diary of a young woman who has been brutally abducted one day out of the blue by military authorities. Although she has been charged with no crime, she is sexually abused, psychologically and physically tortured as the puzzle of her life--of her relations to her family, friends, the government--is pieced together. Everything in this book, though in the guise of fiction, is true. Derived from a review by Allen Boyer found on-line: Victim for victim, the holocaust that swept across Argentina during the 1970s echoed the Nazi holocaust. What the Argentina terror lacked in scope, it made up in cruelty; the death squads who worked out of Argentina's barracks and police stations had the leisure to indulge every sadistic whim. "Requiem for a Woman's Soul" follows one victim into this hell. The book draws on interviews with women who suffered under political repression. Their stories are shocking. "Requiem" unfolds as a diary within a diary. One morning after Mass, Father Antonio records in his journal, he is handed a cardboard box. Inside are countless scraps of paper, which he gradually pieces together into the prison diary of a young woman named Susana. The diary tells how she was arrested, shackled to a prison cot, tortured, interrogated and raped. Its underlying facts are harrowing, with scene after scene of brutality. This book is compelling not just because it deals with a tragedy.…