CLARÍN PRIZE, 2005

In Thursday Night Widows, fifty kilometres outside the gates of Buenos Aires lives the small society of Altos de la Cascada. Behind locked doors, shielded from the crime, poverty and filth of the people on the streets, it is seemingly occupied with troubles such as the summer’s drought of the communal golf course. Behind this façade, however, lie conflicts that cross all borders of social class: Infidelity, alcoholism, infertility and abusive marriage. And finally, the economical consequences of 9/11 and Argentina’s crisis take their toll. Yet instead of rolling up their sleeves, three devoted family fathers from Cascada find an alternative solution in order to save their loved ones from lowering their accustomed standard of living, let alone their wives having to do the housework…

The novel opens with the discovery of the three men’s corpses in the pool. Had not Romina – psychologically victimised by her adoptive mother for her dark skin – and her boyfriend Juani witnessed the event, no one would ever have known what really happened. Claudia Piñeiro has invented this story before it took place in a similar way, and, in sparse and powerful prose, tells of a crime that generated a scandal in the Argentinean media.