Blanco the magician is famous throughout Europe for his telepathic powers. Undermined by a conspiracy and exposed to the world as a charlatan, Blanco is forced to flee to Argentina, where he takes up with the voluptuous Gina. This book received Spain's Nadal Prize for fiction in 1988.

The Event (Masks)

Literature & Fiction

Saer, Juan Jose'

United States

Serpent's Tail

During a stifling Argentinian summer, a horse-killer is on the loose. Cat Garay, heir to a once-prosperous, now dilapidated family, and his lover Elisa protect a horse from certain mutilation and death. An intense sexual affair and a desultory hunt for the killer are played out on the banks of the Parana river in an atmosphere of political anxiety and disintegration. The haunting prose of Nobody Nothing Never confirms Juan Jose Saer's reputation as the most innovative Latin American writer of his generation.

Nobody Nothing Never (Masks)

He's called 'the monster of the Bastille'. He's brutally murdered 27 elderly women in one area of Paris. Chief Inspector Morvan is in charge of the investigation into this macabre and sinister case: every victim seems to have invited the killer into her home, to have enjoyed a meal, even celebrated, before her death. And each time the killer has meticulously bathed himself, leaving the scene of the crime without a single fingerprint. In Argentina meanwhile, an untitled manuscript by an unnamed author is discovered amongst the papers of a missing poet, known for his hatred of the novel. The investigation seeks to unravel two cases - one criminal, one literary. Part police investigation, part historical account and part novel, it shows Saer at his virtuoso best, orchestrating the different layers effortlessly. Hitchcockian, blending suspense with superb descriptions of everyday life, this is both a crime novel and a journey into the psyche of horror.

The Investigation

"With meticulous prose, rendered by Dolph's translation into propulsive English, Saer's The Sixty-Five Years of Washington captures the wilderness of human experience in all its variety."—New York Times
It's October 1960, say, or 1961, in a seaside Argentinian city named Santa Fe, and The Mathematician—wealthy, elegant, educated, dressed from head to toe in white—is just back from a grand tour of Europe. He's on his way to drop off a press release about the trip to the papers when he runs into Ángel Leto, a relative newcomer to Santa Fe who does some accounting, but who this morning has decided to wander the town rather than go to work.
One day soon, The Mathematician will disappear into exile after his wife's assassination, and Leto will vanish into the guerrilla underground, clutching his suicide pill like a talisman. But for now, they settle into a long conversation about the events of Washington Noriega's sixty-fifth birthday—a party neither of them attended.
Saer's The Sixty-Five Years of Washington is simultaneously a brilliant comedy about memory, narrative, time, and death and a moving narrative about the lost generations of an Argentina that was perpetually on the verge of collapse.
Juan José Saer was the leading Argentinian writer of the post-Borges generation. The author of numerous novels and short-story collections (including Scars and La Grande), Saer was awarded Spain's prestigious Nadal Prize in 1987 for The Event.
Steve Dolph is the founder of Calque, a journal of literature in translation. His translation of Juan José Saer's Scars was a finalist for the 2012 Best Translated Book Award.

The Sixty-Five Years of Washington

Literary

Open Letter

La Grande—Saer's final novel, which is also a fantastic entry-point to his world—centers around two related stories: that of Gutiérrez, his sudden departure from Argentina thirty years before, and his equally mysterious return; and that of "precisionism," a literary movement founded by a rather dangerous fraud.

La Grande

"The most important Argentinian writer since Borges."—The Independent
Juan José Saer's Scars explores a crime committed by Luis Fiore, a thirty-nine year old laborer who shot his wife twice in the face with a shotgun; or, rather, it explores the circumstances of four characters who have some connection to the crime: a young reporter, Ángel, who lives with his mother and works the courthouse beat; a dissolute attorney who clings to life only for his nightly baccarat game; a misanthropic and dwindling judge who's creating a superfluous translation of The Picture Dorian Gray; and, finally, Luis Fiore himself, who, on May Day, went duck hunting with his wife, daughter, and a bottle of gin.
Each of the stories in Scars explores a fragment in time—be it a day or several months—when the lives of these characters are altered, more or less, by a singular event. Originally published in 1969, Scars marked a watershed moment in Argentinian literature and has since become a modern classic of Latin American literature.
Juan José Saer was the leading Argentinian writer of the post-Borges generation. The author of numerous novels and short-story collections (including Scars and La Grande), Saer was awarded Spain's prestigious Nadal Prize in 1987 for The Event.
Steve Dolph is the founder of Calque, a journal of literature in translation. His translation of Juan José Saer's Scars was a finalist for the 2012 Best Translated Book Award.

Scars

"The most important Argentinian writer since Borges."—The Independent
The One Before is a triptych of sorts, consisting of a series of short pieces—called "Arguments"—and two longer stories—"Half-Erased" and "The One Before"—all of which revolve around the ideas of exile and memory.
Many of the characters who populate Juan José Saer's other novels appear here, including Tomatis, Ángel Leto, and Washington Noriega (who appear in La Grande, Scars, and The Sixty-Five Years of Washington, all of which are available from Open Letter). Saer's typical themes are on display in this collection as well, as is his idiosyncratic blend of philosophical ruminations and precise storytelling.
From the story of the two characters who decide to bury a message in a bottle that simply says "MESSAGE," to Pigeon Garay's attempt to avoid the rising tides and escape Argentina for Europe, The One Before evocatively introduces readers to Saer's world and gives the already indoctrinated new material about their favorite characters.
Juan José Saer was the leading Argentinian writer of the post-Borges generation. The author of numerous novels and short-story collections (including Scars and La Grande), Saer was awarded Spain's prestigious Nadal Prize in 1987 for The Event.
Roanne Kantor is a doctoral student in comparative literature at the University of Texas at Austin. Her translation of The One Before won the 2009 Susan Sontag Prize for Translation. Her translations from Spanish have appeared in Little Star magazine, Two Lines, and Palabras Errantes.

The One Before

"Saer is one of the best writers of today in any language."—Ricardo Piglia
"What Saer presents marvelously is the experience of reality, and the characters' attempts to write their own narratives within its excess."—Bookforum
In modern-day Paris, Pichón Garay receives a computer disk containing a manuscript—which might be fictional, or could be a memoir—by Doctor Real, a nineteenth-century physician tasked with leading a group of five mental patients on a trip to a recently constructed asylum. Their trip, which ends in disaster and fire, is a brilliant tragicomedy thanks to the various insanities of the patients, among whom is a delusional man who greatly over-estimates his own importance and a nymphomaniac nun who tricks everyone—even the other patients—into sleeping with her.
Fascinating as a faux historical novel and written in Saer's typically gorgeous, Proustian style, The Clouds can be read as a metaphor for exile—a huge theme for Saer and a lot of Argentine writers—as well as an examination of madness.
Juan José Saer was the leading Argentinian writer of the post-Borges generation. The author of numerous novels and short-story collections (including Scars and La Grande), Saer was awarded Spain's prestigious Nadal Prize in 1987 for The Event. Five of his novels are available from Open Letter Books.
Hilary Vaughn Dobel has an MFA in poetry and translation from Columbia University. She is the author of two manuscripts and, in addition to Saer, she has translated work by Carlos Pintado.

The Clouds

One of the late Juan Jose Saer's most beloved novels, The Regal Lemon Tree shows a master stylist at his best. Set during the day and night of New Year's Eve - building up a barbecue that takes on ritual significance - the novel focuses on a couple in the north of Argentina who lost their only son six years prior. Wenceslao spends the day with his extended family and his memories while his wife - truly paralysed by grief - refuses to leave their island, which is home to an almost magical lemon tree that blossoms at all times of the year.

The Regal Lemon Tree

Glose

Genre Fiction

LE TRIPODE

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