Patricia Ratto

Patricia Ratto (born 1962) is an Argentine teacher and writer who lives and works in Tandil, a town in southern Buenos Aires Province. She has written and published the following novels: ''Pequeños hombres blancos'' (Adriana Hidalgo, 2006), ''Nudos'' (Adriana Hidalgo, 2008), and ''Trasfondo'' (Adriana Hidalgo, 2012).

Writing

''Pequeños hombres blancos'' is the tale of a provincial teacher, set during the Argentine dictatorship of the 1970s. The heroine of ''Nudos'' is a social worker whose job opens onto a whole set of stories from figures on the margins of Argentine society. Tandil's ''El Eco'' described it as "exceed ngall expectations."

But Ratto is probably best known for ''Trasfondo'', a fictional reconstruction of the submarine the ARA ''San Luis'''s contribution to the Falklands War. For many weeks, after the sinking of the ''General Belgrano'' and the subsequent return of the Argentine fleet to port, the ''San Luis'' was the only Argentine ship at sea in the war zone. Ratto portrays the isolation of the submarine and its crew, who are almost perpetually submerged and see little more than fog on the few occasions they surface. Ultimately it is revealed that the novel's narrator, a sailor who seems to interact little with his crewmates, has died before the submarine even sets sail. As he ponders as one point in the narrative: "Can one really die and not know it?"

Writing in ''La Nación'', Osvaldo Quiroga commends Ratto's prose style for its "rare beauty and admirable precision." The critic Martín Kohan, meanwhile, compares ''Trasfondo'' to Fogwill's celebrated ''Malvinas Requiem'' (''Los pichiciegos''), observing that while "Fogwill's pichiciegos . .see ghosts briefly, Ratto's sailors, in their submarine war, ''are'' ghosts throughout."

List of works

* .
* .
* .

References

Sources

* .
* .

External links

Official website

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ratto, Patricia
1962 births
Living people
People from Tandil
21st-century Argentine women writers
21st-century Argentine writers