Ernesto Sabato is an Argentine who has had two careers. The first half of his life, he was a physicist, working in Argentina, teaching at MIT and later at Universidad de La Plata. His work in physics was in atomic radiation and he was highly regarded in the field. But in 1943, he had what he called an existential crisis, and left physics and science for good.

Sabato had always been a writer and quite a good one, but it always took a secondary position to both his work as a scientist and to his family. From a family of eleven children, Sabato was always political and his interest in Communism took him to Moscow to study, but he ended up in Paris where he started writing. Moving back to Argentina, it was then that he obtained his physics PhD. From reading about Sabato, it would seem that for a number of years he tried to be both physicist and novelist, and the time finally came when the worlds collided, and he simply chose to be a writer. His work has always incorporated science to a degree, but for the most part it tends to fall within the framework of existential writers. He wrote commentary and stories which were published in Argentine magazines, but it was his first full length novel which brought him attention. Called El Tunel, it was a psychological novel and it met with great reviews. Albert Camus had the book translated into French, and since that time it has been translated into ten other languages.

When Sabato lost faith in science and started writing, he took a decidedly different turn from physics. HIs writing is full of tension and questions existence in the form of almost mysteries. He was especially like by not only Camus but Graham Greene as well. Sabato continues to write.

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