Argentine writer and human rights hero Ernesto Sábato has died at the age of ninety-nine. Sábato was the author of The Tunnel (1948), On Heroes and Tombs (1961), and The Angel of Darkness (1974), and winner of the most prestigious Hispanic literary awards, when in 1983 he was appointed president of the National Commission for Missing Persons of Argentina. He called his work of helping to document the murders, tortures and illegal arrests committed by a regime he had initially supported a “descent into hell.” As a result of its work, the Commission published the startling Nunca Más report, popularly known as the “Sabáto Report,” which served as the basis for prosecuting key figures in the dictatorship after the return to civilian rule. Read an extract from his lyrical memoir Before the End in our February 2004 Argentine issue: http://wordswithoutborders.org/article/from-before-the-end/