"Saer is one of the best writers of today in any language." — Ricardo Piglia
"What Saer presents marvelously is the experience of reality, and the characters' attempts to write their own narratives within its excess." —
In modern-day Paris, Pichón Garay receives a computer disk containing a manuscript — which might be fictional, or could be a memoir — by Doctor Real, a nineteenth-century physician tasked with leading a group of five mental patients on a trip to a recently constructed asylum. Their trip, which ends in disaster and fire, is a brilliant tragicomedy thanks to the various insanities of the patients, among whom is a delusional man who greatly over-estimates his own importance and a nymphomaniac nun who tricks everyone — even the other patients — into sleeping with her.
Fascinating as a faux historical novel and written in Saer's typically gorgeous, Proustian style, can be read as a metaphor for exile — a huge theme for Saer and a lot of Argentine writers — as well as an examination of madness.
Juan José Saer Scars La GrandeThe Event
Hilary Vaughn Dobel