Saccomanno, Guillermo
Entry updated 28 July 2021. Tagged: Author.
(1948- ) Argentinian Comics scriptwriter, poet and author, active from the early 1970s. He is of broad genre interest for his fifth novel 77 (2008; trans Andrea G Labinger 2019), where Kafkaesque topoi (see also Fantastika) markedly enrich a memoir-like narrative focused on the beginning of the Videla dictatorship in Argentina in 1977; Cámara Gesell (2012; trans Andrea G Labinger as Gesell Dome 2016) massively expands and complexifies its predecessor, incorporating elements of the crime novel into a mosaical panorama of Argentinian life, perhaps reflecting some of the strategies of Roberto Bolaño's larger works, in particular The Savage Detectives (1998) or 2066 (2004).
Saccomanno is of specific sf interest for his sixth novel, El Oficinista (2010; trans Andrea G Labinger as The Clerk 2020), set in a depersonalized unnamed Dystopian Near Future City; its protagonist, a metaphysically-inclined bureaucrat (again on lines evocative of Kafka), deals with the terrifying anxieties of urban life, which include terrorist attacks and assaults by packs of Cloned dogs, by himself descending into cruelties against his family and mistress that reflect the nature of a world none can escape. [JC]
Guillermo Saccomanno
born Buenos Aires, Argentina: 1948
works (selected)
- 77 (Buenos Aires, Argentina: Planeta, 2008) [binding unknown/]
- 77 (Rochester, New York: Open Letter, 2019) [trans by Andrea G Labinger of the above: pb/]
- El Oficinista (Buenos Aires, Argentina: Planeta, 2010) [binding unknown/]
- The Clerk (Rochester, New York: Open Letter, 2020) [trans by Andrea G Labinger of the above: pb/]
- Cámara Gesell (Buenos Aires, Argentina: Planeta, 2012) [binding unknown/]
- Gesell Dome (Rochester, New York: Open Letter, 2016) [trans by Andrea G Labinger of the above: pb/]
links
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