Author Description

In What the Night Tells the Day Bianciotti turns from the fiction for which he is widely known to what is in many senses a classic autobiography, a coming-of-age story in which the narrator gradually discovers his homosexuality. But Bianciotti takes this familiar theme and casts it in a narrative that surprises and enchants. It is written in the purest French classical style, marvelously translated by Linda Coverdale. What the Night Tells the Day chronicles Hector Bianciotti's youth among the poor Italian immigrant peasants of the most distant Pampas of rural Argentina, a culture as far from today's urban gay life as can be imagined. Sent away from home to a Catholic school, he suddenly and painfully unravels the secret of his own life and of those around him. The book ends with Bianciotti's departure for France, where he will become the distinguished writer and critic he is today.