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The Witness

The Witness

by Juan José Saer

Published by: Serpent's Tail

Imprint: Serpent's Tail

168 Pages, 5.10 x 7.70 x 0.40 in

Paperback
9781846686917
Published: June 2009

$17.95

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Description
Authors
Praise

“The evocative imagery and ideas revealed in The Witness are not easily forgotten.”—Washington Times

“Haunting and beautifully written.”—Independent on Sunday

In sixteenth-century Spain, a cabin boy sets sail on a ship bound for the New World. An inland expedition ends in disaster when the group is attacked by Indians.

The Witness explores the relationship between existence and description, foreignness and cultural identity.

Juan José Saer was born in Argentina in 1937 and is considered one of Argentina’s leading writers of the post-Borges generation. He died in 2005.

Juan José Saer (1937–2005), born in Santa Fé, Argentina, was the leading Argentinian writer of the post-Borges generation. In 1968, he moved to Paris and taught literature at the University of Rennes. The author of numerous novels and short-story collections (including Sixty-Five Years of Washington, Scars, The One Before, The Clouds, all being published by Open Letter), Saer was awarded Spain's prestigious Nadal Prize in 1987 for The Event.

Steve Dolph is the founding editor of Calque, a journal of literature in translation. His translation of Saer's Scars was a finalist for the 2012 Best Translated Book Award. He lives in Philadelphia where he spends his summers rooting for the Phillies.

"The best-known of [Juan Jose] Saer’s works in Argentina is The Witness, another faux-historical novel that enacts the 'speculative anthropology' he thought fiction should undertake. Formally innovative as ever, this tremendous novel sets lived time against book time, so that the longer the period covered, the shorter the account…"—The Nation

The Witness

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