BUENOS AIRES, April 30 (UPI) -- Ernesto Sabato, the Argentine novelist who also headed an investigation into disappearances under the military junta, died Saturday at 99.
The cause of death was bronchitis, the Buenos Aires Herald reported. He died at his home in Buenos Aires.
Sabato's work included a trilogy, "The Tunnel," published in 1948 and followed by "Of Heroes and Graves" in 1961 and "Abadon, the Exterminator" in 1974. The Independent, a British newspaper, recently described "The Tunnel" as "among the existential landmarks of post-war fiction."
Sabato abandoned the Communism of his youth, The Washington Post reported. Instead, he often sought for common ground.
When President Juan Peron was ousted in 1955, Sabato noted "many millions of the dispossessed and workers shed tears" while he and other well-off Argentinians were applauding.
Sabato headed the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons after the fall of the junta in 1983. Its report, "Nunca Mas," was called the Sabato Report in Argentina.
