Juan José Saer

Juan José Saer (28 June 1937 - 11 June 2005) was one of the most important Argentine novelists of the last fifty years.

Born to Syrian immigrants in Serodino, a small town in the Santa Fe Province, he 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 remained until his death from lung cancer in Paris at the age of 67. He had recently retired from his position as a lecturer at the University of Rennes, and had almost finished his final novel, "La Grande" (2005), which has since been published posthumously, along with a series of critical articles on Latin American and European writers, "Trabajos" (2006).

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 (Ricardo Piglia, Cesar Aira, Roberto Bolaño), Saer often takes as his point of departure a particular and highly codified genre, e.g. detective fiction ("The Investigation"), colonial encounters ("The Witness"), travelogues ("El rio sin orillas"), or a canonical modern writer, e.g. Proust (in "La mayor") and Joyce ("Sombras sobre vidrio esmerilado").

His novel "La ocasión" won the Nadal Prize in 1987.

Bibliography

*"El arte de narrar" (1988) ISBN 9509840068
*"El arte de narrar : poemas, 1960/1975" (1977)
*"El arte de narrar : poemas" (2000) ISBN 9507312897
*"Cicatrices" (1969)
*"El Concepto de ficción" (1997) ISBN 9509122483
*"Cuentos completos, 1957-2000" (2001) ISBN 9507313214
*"En la zona, 1957-1960" (1960) (2003) ISBN 9507313125
*"El entenado" (1983) ISBN 9506170061 - (1988) ISBN 8423316327
*"The event" translated by Helen Lane (1995) ISBN 1852422491
*"Glosa " (1988) ISBN 8423316734
*"La grande" (2005) ISBN 9507314733
*"Juan José Saer" (1986) ISBN 950910678X
*"El limonero real : novela" (1974) ISBN 8432053120
*"Una literatura sin atributos" (1986) (1996) ISBN 9688592366
*"Lo imborrable" (1993) ISBN 9504000924
*"Lugar" (2000) ISBN 9507312854
*"La mayor" (1976) 8432025151 - (1982) ISBN 9502506413
*"Nadie nada nunca" (1980) ISBN 9682309816
*"La narración-objeto" (1999) ISBN 9507312439
*"Narraciones" (1983) vol. 1 ISBN 9502506669 - vol. 2 ISBN 9502506677
*"Nobody nothing never" translated by Helen Lane (1993) ISBN 1852422734 (pbk)
*"Las nubes" (1997) ISBN 9507311726
*"La ocasión" (1988) ISBN 8423316181
*"Palo y hueso" (2000) ISBN 9507312706
*"La pesquisa" (1994) ISBN 9507311041
*"Responso" (1964)
*"El río sin orillas : tratado imaginario" (1991) ISBN 9504000665
*"La selva espesa" (1994) ISBN 968363995X
*"Trabajos" (2005) ISBN 9507314806
*"Unidad de lugar" (1967)
*"La vuelta completa" (1966)
*"The witness" translated by Margaret Jull Costa (1990) ISBN 1852421843

External links

* [http://books.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,11617,1510119,00.html Biography:Guardian unlimited]
* [http://www.literatura.org/Saer/Saer.html Biography:Argentine Literature] (Spanish)
* [http://www.epdlp.com/escritor.php?id=2254 Biography:El Poder de la Palabra] (Spanish)