Juan José Saer
Juan José Saer was a major Argentine writer. For his novel The Event, he won the Premio Nadal in 1987. In 1990, he shared the Silver Condor Award for Best Original Screenplay for the film . In 2004, he received a Platinum Konex Award for his 1994–98 work.
Biography
Born in Serodino, a small town in the Santa Fe Province, to Syrian immigrants originally from Damascus, Saer studied law and philosophy at the National University of the Littoral, where he taught History of Cinematography. Thanks to a scholarship, he moved to Paris in 1968 where he taught at the University of Rennes.Suffering from lung cancer, he died in Paris on 11 June 2005, at the age of sixty-seven. He was buried in the Père-Lachaise cemetery. At the time of his death he was writing the last chapters of his longest novel, La Grande, which ended up appearing posthumously along with Trabajos, a collection of literary articles that appeared in various newspapers and magazines that Saer already had ready for publication.
In 2012, the first instalment of his previously unpublished working notebooks were edited and published as Papeles de trabajo by Seix Barral in Argentina. A second volume soon followed, which was the result of five years of editing work by a team coordinated by Julio Premat, who wrote the introduction of the first volume. These notebooks allow readers a privileged insight into the creative processes of Saer. As critics point out, the books of Juan José Saer may be taken as a single "oeuvre", set in his "La Zona", a fluvial region around the Argentinian city of Santa Fé, populated by characters who are developed and become referential from novel to novel.
Saer's novels frequently thematize the situation of the self-exiled writer through the figures of two twin brothers, one of whom remained in Argentina during the dictatorship, while the other, like Saer himself, moved to Paris; several of his novels trace their separate and intertwining fates, along with those of a host of other characters who alternate between foreground and background from work to work. Like several of his contemporaries, Saer's work often builds on particular and highly codified genres, such as detective fiction, colonial encounters, travelogues, or canonical modern writers.
Style and influences
Along with Juan Carlos Onetti, Saer is the Rioplatense writer who most evidences within his work the influence of the American writer William Faulkner, especially for the recurrence of a group of characters in a specific space.Legacy and reputation
Four of his novels - The Investigation, The Witness, and The Sixty-Five Years of Washington - appear on various lists made by Latin American and Spanish writers and critics of recent great books in the Spanish language.Martin Kohan considers Saer to be the most important writer of Argentina after Jorge Luis Borges. Beatriz Sarlo considers him to be the best Argentine writer of the second half of the 20th century.
Novels
Responso La vuelta completa Cicatrices. Scars, trans. Steve Dolph El limonero real. The Regal Lemon Tree, trans. Sergio Waisman Nadie nada nunca. Nobody Nothing Never, trans. Helen R. Lane El entenado. The Witness, trans. Margaret Jull Costa '. The Sixty-Five Years of Washington, trans. Steve Dolph La ocasión. The Event, trans. Helen R. Lane El río sin orillas Lo imborrable La pesquisa. The Investigation, trans. Helen R. Lane Las nubes. The Clouds, trans. Hilary Vaughn Dobel- '
Novellas and short stories
En la zona, 1957-1960 Palo y hueso Unidad de lugar La mayor. The One Before, trans. Roanne Kantor- ''Lugar''
Poems
El arte de narrar: poemas, 1960/1975- ''El arte de narrar : poemas ''
Essays
El concepto de ficción La narración-objeto- ''Trabajos''
Scripts
Palo y hueso- ''Las veredas de Saturno''
Compilations
Narraciones 1 Narraciones 2 Cuentos completos, 1957–2000 Papeles de trabajo. Borradores inéditos Papeles de trabajo II. Borradores inéditos Poemas. Borradores inéditos 3 Ensayos. Borradores inéditos 4- ''A medio borrar''
English translations in anthologies and journals
- "Shadows on Jeweled Glass", trans. Jim Hicks