Antes del fin is an autobiography of Ernesto Sabato

Ernesto Sabato

Ernesto Sabato , was an Argentine writer, painter and physicist. According to the BBC he "won some of the most prestigious prizes in Hispanic literature" and "became very influential in the literary world throughout Latin America"...

 released in 1998 in which he recounts his life and the influences on his political and ethical opinions. Sábato discusses the ill effects of globalization and the exalting of rationalism and materialism. There are also several tender passages about his school experiences in the 1920s (when there was more idealism

Idealism

In philosophy, idealism is the family of views which assert that reality, or reality as we can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial. Epistemologically, idealism manifests as a skepticism about the possibility of knowing any mind-independent thing...

, Sábato says), about his deceased wife and son, Matilde and Jorge, and about the struggling workers he meets on the streets of Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...

.