Abel Posse
The novelist's father, Ernesto Parentini, a porteño of Italian parents, was one of the founders of Artistas Argentinos Asociados and was the producer of the legendary feature film La guerra gaucha (1942), based on the text by the poet Leopoldo Lugones. The young Abel Posse grew up in the Argentine capital near Rivadavia street, and given his father's profession was exposed to the artistic and cultural milieu this most sophisticated of the South American capitals had to offer. The “Queen of the River Plate”, as Buenos Aires came to be known, fascinated the young man, (4) and his memories are evoked in his novel Los demonios ocultos (1987).
He was able to mingle with the glamorous stars of Argentine show business, like Chas de Cruz, Pierina Dealessi, Ulises Petit de Murat, Muñoz Azpiri, the writer of radioplays which were performed by Eva Duarte (de Perón), as well as the tango composers Aníbal Troilo and Homero Manzi. Such were the family connections to show business that one of his aunts, Esmeralda Leiva de Heredia, better known as “La Jardín”, was an actress friend of Eva Duarte. (5) Growing up in this environment enabled him to obtain an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of the tango repertoire and its culture, (6) which imbues his novel La reina del Plata (1988).
Abel Posse
Posse studied at the Law Faculty in Buenos Aires until 1958. Apart from his studies “lectured by fascist-Peronist professors” (12) who bored him, he lived the “night life” fiesta of Buenos Aires, a city which in those days was home to the most important publishing houses in the Spanish speaking world and also to exiled writers and intellectuals of the Spanish Civil War. According to Posse, his night time meetings and conversations in Buenos Aires cafés allowed him to deepen his knowledge of Russian and French literature, German philosophy and oriental spiritualism. In this rich bohemian environment he met Jorge Luis Borges, Eduardo Mallea, Ezequiel Martínez Estrada, Ricardo Molinari, Manuel Mujica Lainez, Ramón Gomez de la Serna and Rafael Alberti (13). He became close friends with the poets Conrado Nalé Roxlo and Carlos Mastronardi, as well as Borges, who opened the doors for him of the SADE and who would later help him to publish his first short stories and poems in the daily El Mundo. 
In those years Posse became attracted to Peronist ideas. Although he had been born into an anti-Peronist family, the huge public demonstration of 17 October 1945 had left a lasting impression (14), as had the strength of Evita and her ability to bring life into the movement, together with the open public grieving aroused by her funeral in 1952. These years of university life and above all of the night life in Buenos Aires are depicted by Posse as a true “golden age” which he recreates in certain passages of La reina del Plata (1988) and La pasión segun Eva (1994), a fictional biography which conveys the last days of Eva Perón. After having undertaken his military service in 1955, during the anti-Peronist Revolución Libertadora, Posse completed his university studies in 1958. That same year, he wrote a screenplay, “La cumparsa” (The troupe), which was given an award by the National Institute of Cinematography; set in Patagonia, the troupe is composed of a group of sheep shearers who turn out to be a veritable court of miracles. (15)