In Sin rumbo Cambaceres portraits scenes of the Argentine upper class at the turn of the XIX Century. Detailed and realistic the author defines with literary uniqueness the atmosphere with the initial clash during the sheep shearing scene. Then come the noon horseback ride to the peasant woman's shack, the forced seduction down to complete surrender in body and soul, and the whim of a night spent together with the sensations that assault and repulse him. The flight to the mundane life in Buenos Aires, the club, the theatres, complete the portrait of a lost man who ends up facing nature in his...

In Sin Rumbo (1885), the Argentine novelist Eugenio Cambaceres (1843-1889) offers a graphic portrait of the decadence of the Argentine upper class at the end of the Nineteenth Century, as seen through the useless, debauched and violent life of the work's protagonist, the wealthy young estanciero, Andres. Detailed and vivid, following the precepts of the naturalist school founded by the French author, Emile Zola, Cambaceres defines with literary uniqueness -especially for nineteenth century Latin American literary circles and society in general- the lack of "bearings" of the ruling oligarchy...

By the end of the 19th century, successive waves of immigration had modified the booming Argentine society at a vertiginous pace, violently shaking its structures. The undesired side effects of the massive immigrant flow forced readjustments in the free-thinking, free-enterprise, liberal line of thought, pursued until then by the aristocratic but progessive ruling classes. The contradictions in their ideology surfaced, steering official discourse towards an often xenophobic, racist, conservative and defensive stance. Within this context of socio-political skepticism boiling underneath the...