Juan Jos 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. Six of his novels are available from Open Letter Books. Sergio Waisman has translated sever books of Latin American literature, including The Absent City by Ricardo Piglia, for which he received an NEA Translation Fellowship Award in 2000. His first novel, Leaving, was published in the U.S. in 2004 and in 2010 as Irse in Argentina. His latest translations are Target in the Night by Piglia, The Underdogs by Mariano Azuela, and An Anthology of Spanish-American Modernismo.
"""A cerebral explorer of the problems of narrative in the wake of Joyce and Woolf, of Borges, of Rulfo and Arlt, Saer is also a stunning poet of place.""--The Nation ""Juan José Saer must be added to the list of the best South American writers.""--Le Monde ""To say that Juan José Saer is the best Argentinian writer of today is to undervalue his work. It would be better to say that Saer is one of the best writers of today in any language.""--Ricardo Piglia ""The most striking element of Saer's writing is his prose, at once dynamic and poetic. . . . It is brilliant.""--Harvard Review ""Brilliant. . . . Saer's The Sixty-Five Years of Washington captures the wildness of human experience in all its variety.""--New York Times ""What Saer presents marvelously is the experience of reality, and the characters' attempts to write their own narratives within its excess.""--Bookforum"