Carlos Balmaceda

It’s 1940. Manuel Puig, eight, and Carmen Acuña, fourteen, meet at the General Villegas cinema and become close friends. When Puig leaves the town they begin to write to each other. They will never stop doing it until the famous writer dies unexpectedly in Cuernavaca, Mexico. As the years go by, Carmencita -as Puig nicknames her- gathers the letters together into his personal journals and rewrites, with surprising tenderness and beauty, the friendship story that united them for more than half a century. The exquisite narration, the deep sensitivity and originality of the style that the author unfolds allows to discover a new and unknown Manuel Puig, with the ghosts, obsessions and fears that hounded him, and with the incurable solitude that haunted him even during the splendour of his international fame. Next to Puig we find the extraordinary Carmencita, a country woman, intelligent and sensitive, a voracious reader and cinephile, who throughout her life had to face dramatic and painful moments in a country that is built to the blows and startles.

Contigo a la distancia is the fascinating story of two souls united beyond time and distance, and also beyond their differences and contrasts. Carlos Balmaceda shows us the purest and bright side of two lives shaken by a society full of political, ideological and sexual prejudices, intolerance and authoritarianism. A deeply current novel that at the same time is an exciting reflection on how art, even in the midst of greater adversity, can change our lives.

'Dos seres marginales que se contaron la vida', La Prensa, 19/11/2017

The novel delves into the timeless struggle between good and evil. Set in the coastal city of Mar del Plata, it interweaves several storylines that converge with the rape of a teenage girl within a church. The plot crafts a complex web of intrigue, spirituality, occultism, astronomy, exorcisms, and sacrilegious abuses. Furthermore, it uncovers stories of children stolen during the dictatorship and the sinister complicity among powerful circles. With striking audacity, it even ventures into the Bible's best-kept secrets, presenting a stark reflection on earthly hell

Paulina Bartock tiene treinta años y enseña Literatura en la Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata. Recién separada de su pareja de toda la vida, conoce a Jonás Alfano, también profesor en la misma facultad. Entre ambos se teje, casi sin quererlo, el hilo de un romance que pronto revelará el reverso inquietante del deseo: sus zonas de sombra, su intensidad devastadora, su capacidad para transformar y destruir.

Orphaned at birth, César Lombroso inherits a restaurant: the Almacén Buenos Aires. Hidden among its old cupboards, he discovers a mysterious volume—the Cookbook of the South Seas—whose pages contain not only recipes for pleasure and happiness, but also dark formulas that, if prepared without scruple, can push the senses to their breaking point. Through this fascinating and perilous book, César attains fame, fortune, passion—even fleeting happiness. But a fearsome force pulses in his blood, dragging him ever closer to the abyss of the forbidden.

The Gospel of Evita offers a profound and poetic portrait of Eva Perón in the final days of her life. Balmaceda explores her most intimate fears: the brutal awareness of a body no longer loved, the solitude that settles like an inescapable fate, the blend of fury and sorrow of someone forced to depart too soon. Evita emerges in all her complexity—fierce woman, tragic figure, and mythical leader of a nation destined to mourn her forever.

Based on a real-life case that shocked Argentina—the abduction, murder, and mutilation of several women in Mar del Plata, the country’s most iconic seaside city—this novel follows three protagonists whose paths intersect in unexpected ways: a hardened police chief, a blind clairvoyant, and a journalist determined to uncover the truth. The killer’s rituals, as sadistic as they are mysterious, trigger an investigation as disturbing as it is revealing.