Synopses & Reviews
This entire novel consists of a discussion between two friends—one who just returned from Europe, the other a young accountant—about a grand birthday party neither one was able to attend. This doesn't stop them from swapping stories and hypotheses, which balloon into a riveting depiction of the complexities of life, especially at the dawn of Argentina's Dirty War.
Review
"In this brilliant novel, the Argentine writer Saer packs several decades of his countrys history into a single hour ... With meticulous prose, rendered by Dolphs translation into propulsive English, Saers novel captures the wilderness of human experience in all its variety, as well as the blind, incomprehensible, ceaseless drift” of time."Jascha Hoffman,
The New York Times"The Sixty-Five Years of Washington is worth working throughnot only for the richness of its content but also because the effort itself is what gives us a three-dimensional understanding of its themes."Suzanne Marie Hopcroft, The Rogue Idea
"...Phenomenal, demonstrating a dazzling unification of form and function."Scott Bryan Wilson, Rain Taxi
"But while some of those sentences are long enough to rival Prousts, they are infused with a palpitating sensuality, their breathing equally crafted. A cerebral explorer of the problems of narrative in the wake of Joyce and Woolf, of Borges, Rulfo and Arlt, Saer is also a stunning poet of place."Lorna Scott Fox, The Nation
Synopsis
Saers The Sixty-Five Years of Washington is simultaneously a brilliant comedy about memory, narrative, time, and death and a moving narrative about the lost generations of an Argentina that was perpetually on the verge of collapse.
Synopsis
"With meticulous prose, rendered by Dolph's translation into propulsive English, Saer's The Sixty-Five Years of Washington captures the wilderness of human experience in all its variety."--New York Times
It's October 1960, say, or 1961, in a seaside Argentinian city named Santa Fe, and The Mathematician--wealthy, elegant, educated, dressed from head to toe in white--is just back from a grand tour of Europe. He's on his way to drop off a press release about the trip to the papers when he runs into Angel Leto, a relative newcomer to Santa Fe who does some accounting, but who this morning has decided to wander the town rather than go to work.
One day soon, The Mathematician will disappear into exile after his wife's assassination, and Leto will vanish into the guerrilla underground, clutching his suicide pill like a talisman. But for now, they settle into a long conversation about the events of Washington Noriega's sixty-fifth birthday--a party neither of them attended.
Saer's The Sixty-Five Years of Washington is simultaneously a brilliant comedy about memory, narrative, time, and death and a moving narrative about the lost generations of an Argentina that was perpetually on the verge of collapse.
Juan Jose 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.
Steve Dolph is the founder of Calque, a journal of literature in translation. His translation of Juan Jose Saer's Scars was a finalist for the 2012 Best Translated Book Award.
Synopsis
Two friends muse and hypothesize about the grand birthday they missed in the years before Argentina's Dirty War.
About the Author
Juan José 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 Spains prestigious Nadal Prize in 1987 for
The Event.Steve Dolph is the founder of Calque, a journal of literature in translation. His translation of Juan José Saer's Scars was a finalist for the 2012 Best Translated Book Award.