The Witness

Juan José Saer · 1937–2005 · Argentina

Originally El entenado (Spanish) · translated by Margaret Jull Costa

Why it matters

The sole survivor of a massacred sixteenth-century Spanish expedition is adopted, then returned, by an Indigenous tribe whose worldview he can never fully translate. Saer treats memory and perception with near-philosophical rigor.

At a glance

Dense, meditative prose interrogates memory and perception more than it tells a story.