cover image Champions of the World

Champions of the World

Douglas Mine. Simon & Schuster, $7.95 (303pp) ISBN 978-0-671-66802-0

Mine, who covered South America as an Associated Press reporter, offers a compelling first novel about Argentina. The first half takes place in 1978, the year Argentina is host to the soccer World Cupand under public scrutinyduring the ``dirty war'' conducted by its military junta. The Maglione family is a microcosm of the nation: Santiago, an aeronautical engineer who works within the system to protect pk his kin; Diego, his brother, a physician who, along with his wife Ana, sides with the opposition; and their children, who become victims of the state and family politics. Mine does not flinch from depicting scenes of torture nor does he sentimentalize the grief of the Argentine citizenry as the effects of this ``war'' take their toll. The novel's second half is set in 1982, the year of the war waged by the tyrannous junta against Britain, over the Falkland Islands. The military makes last, desperate efforts to somehow change the inevitable course of defeat; and Santiago, once a government loyalist but a witness, slowy and grimly, to the loss of his family, strikes a massive blow for the opposition. (Nov.)