Saer, Juan Jose

Coming from a family of Syrian immigrants. In 1949 the family moved to Santa Fe. He studied film history and theory at the National Coast University ( UNL ) in Santa Fe.

Since 1968 , having received a scholarship, he moved to Paris, where he has lived since then. He taught literature at the University of Rennes . Died of lung cancer.

Juan Jose Saer (Serodino, Santa Fe, Argentina, June 28, 1937 - Paris, France, November-June in 2005) was an Argentine writer, considered one of the most important in Latin American and Spanish literature in the 20th century ^{1 2} “Argentina's most important writer after Borges” by Martin Cohan ³ And the best Argentinean writer of the second half of the 20th century, according to Beatrice Sarlo. ⁴

Its relevance is reflected in the fact that three of his novels - El Entenado , La Grande and Glosa - appear on a list compiled in 2007 by 81 Latin American and Spanish writers and critics, with top 100 books on Spanish for the past 25 years, ⁵ His works have been translated into French, English, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Greek, Czech and Japanese.

His son Jeronimo (1970–2015) stood out as a musician and director. ^{6 7}

Debuting in 1960 in the zone , he stood apart from the publishing boom of Latin American prose of this period. He was influenced by the new novel . Fame and authority - both in Latin America and in Europe - came to him in the 1980s. The author of twelve novels, several books of short stories, poetry collections, essays. The action of almost all of Saer’s works is developed in the provincial city of Santa Fe and its environs, in this regard it is compared with Joyce and Faulkner . Saer himself recognized the profound impact on him of Faulkner, Conrad , Claude Simon .

Saer's works have been translated into the main European languages, several of them have been made into films.

• Fernández N. Narraciones viajeras: César Aira y Juan José Saer. Buenos Aires: Editorial Biblos, 2000
• Premat J. La dicha de Saturno: escritura y melancolía en la obra de Juan José Saer. Rosario: Beatriz Viterbo Editora, 2002
• Corbatta J. Juan José Saer, arte poética y práctica literaria. Buenos Aires: Corregidor, 2005
• Del recuerdo a la voz: homenaje a Juan José Saer. Los Polvorines: Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento, 2005
• Pilipovsky de Levy C.I. Poética y representación: la narrativa de Juan Jose Saer. Tucumán: Universidad Nacional de Tucumán, 2006
• Riera G. Littoral of the letter: Saer's art of narration. Lewisburg: Bucknell UP, 2006

• Obituary in the Guardian newspaper
• Site dedicated to the writer, texts on line (Spanish)
• Page on the site Modern Argentinean literature (Spanish)
• Juan Jose Saer at IMDB