Hi, I’m about to finish this book and I’m just appalled at the complete lack of research that went into it. I really liked the series so far, but the depiction of Argentina is just so objectively bad that it makes me cringe.
Curious, I look for past posts or articles about this and found nothing. On the contrary, found several cases of people saying they learned about Argentina through the book.
I’ll give some examples:
– Perón the dictator: The author presents Perón as a dictator. He wasn’t. He had participated in a coupe before and (in my personal opinion) was too authoritarian. But he was elected. He didn’t seize power nor used military power to keep it.
– Perons government threw dissidents out of planes to the ocean: by far the most insulting one. That method was famously used by the military dictatorship that started on 76. Desparecidos? Kinda famous and hard to mix up. A lot of the victims were peronists too. I simply cannot understand how an author makes such a mistake. It’s extremely easy to research this.
– Speaking about stupid and easy to check errors: he puts Tucumán Province in the limit with Chile. I think he is confusing it with Neuquén maybe? Cause he also says it’s close to Bariloche, which is in Rio Negro province. He also says Bariloche was founded by a German. It wasn’t. And Tucumán does not limit Chile.
There are other errors, but these are the ones I remember now.
I know one should definitely not learn history from fiction novels. But I had enjoyed the portrait of Berlin in the previous titles. I actually reside in Berlin and was trying to put some of the story in the places I see daily. Now I just have to assume his portrait of Berlin might be as blatantly lazy and inaccurate as his Buenos Aires.
by -ewha-