Para esta noche / Tonight
Novel , 1943
Debolsillo
Tonight is set in a port which has surrendered to the forces of an anonymous general. It could be Valencia in 1939, Buenos Aires or any city after a dictator has come to power. Inspired by conversations with anarchists exiled in Buenos Aires after their defeat in the Spanish Civil War, Onetti structures his novel as a thriller to map out the despair of the men trying to avoid capture and the sadism of those in pursuit. Morasan's secret police patrol the seedy quayside bars, hunting down Barcala and Ossorio. In an atmosphere of suspicion, fear and betrayal, these erstwhile revolutionary leaders question their political inspiration, cling to memoires of moments of warmth and passion as the net draws ever tighter around them: 'All there is is this trap and us waiting to be cut to pieces.'
Onetti's stark and ironic prose brilliantly conveys the pointlessness of war, the terror of betrayal and the futility of death in the name of lost heroic causes.