Juan José Saer
Argentina
Slow, recursive, philosophically dense sentences that circle a single moment or perception from every possible angle before releasing it.
Saer was born in the small Santa Fe province town of Serodino to Syrian immigrant parents, and set nearly all his fiction along the same stretch of the Paraná river region for the rest of his career, a fixed geography he returned to from increasing physical distance.
He moved to Paris in 1968 to teach literature and remained there until his death, writing Argentina from across the Atlantic much as Joyce wrote Dublin from Trieste and Paris. The Witness, following the sole survivor of a massacred sixteenth-century expedition, shows his characteristic patience with a single perception examined from every angle.
Long read mainly within Argentina, his reputation grew abroad only after his death in Paris in 2005, as English translations slowly caught up with a body of work admirers had compared to Faulkner's.
Their books in the atlas
- 1983
The WitnessLvl 7historical fiction
Meanwhile, elsewhere
1922–2008Alain Robbe-GrilletFranceWestern Europe · France
1932–2016Umberto EcoItalyWestern Europe · Italy
1922–2010José SaramagoPortugalWestern Europe · Portugal
1918–2006Muriel SparkScotlandWestern Europe · Scotland
1919–2013Doris LessingUnited Kingdom / ZimbabweWestern Europe · United Kingdom / Zimbabwe
1927–2015Günter GrassGermanyWestern Europe · GermanyIf you like Saer, try
1914–1999Adolfo Bioy CasaresArgentinashared movement: Argentine Fantastic & Metafiction · kindred genres: philosophical novel · both write in Spanish
b. 1949César AiraArgentinashared movement: Argentine Fantastic & Metafiction · kindred genres: philosophical novel · both write in Spanish
1899–1986Jorge Luis BorgesArgentinashared movement: Argentine Fantastic & Metafiction · kindred genres: philosophical novel · both write in Spanish
1941–2017Ricardo PigliaArgentinashared movement: Argentine Fantastic & Metafiction · both write in Spanish · same region & era
1917–2005Augusto Roa BastosParaguaykindred genres: historical fiction · both write in Spanish · neighboring movements
1873–1952Mariano AzuelaMexicokindred genres: historical fiction · both write in Spanish · neighboring movements