Argentine novelist and essayist Ernesto Sábato was born in Rojas in 1911. After studying at the Faculty of Physical and Mathematical Sciences at the University of La Plata, he moved to Paris, where he earned a doctorate in Physics. He returned to Argentina in 1940 to work as a professor. Three years later, he decided to abandon science to dedicate himself to literature and painting. Since then, he has published both essays, such as * The Other Face of Peronism* (1956), *The Sábato Case: Torture and Freedom of the Press. Open Letter to General Aramburu * (1956), and *Culture at the National Crossroads * (1976), and novels, including * The Tunnel * (1948), *On Heroes and Tombs * (1961), considered a landmark of 20th-century Argentine literature, and *Abaddon, the Exterminator * (1974).

In 1983, following Argentina's defeat in the Falklands War, the government appointed Sábato president of the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons. As a result of this work, he published * Nunca más* (Never Again) , about the repression carried out in his native country by the military governments. In 1979, he was named a Knight of the Legion of Honor of France, and in 1984, he received the Cervantes Prize.