Simón Cardoso had been dead thirty years when his wife, Emilia Dupuy, spotted him at lunchtime in the lounge bar in Trudy Tuesday. So begins Purgatory. Simón, a cartographer like Emilia, vanished during a trip to map an obscure road in Argentina's back country. Later, testimonies suggested that he was one of the thousands of "subversives" arrested, tortured, and executed by the military regime. Yet Emilia, daughter of the regime's chief propagandist, has refused to accept this. She has spent her life longing for Simón to return, following elusive leads, never giving up hope. The husband who reappears to her, however, has not suffered those same years of uncertainty; for him, no time has passed at all.--From back cover.