The formal rigour of modernist narrative and an intensely poetic perception of the world are the two main pillars on which this story collection, a keystone of Argentine literature, is constructed.

Unidad de lugar (A Sense of Place) laid the foundations for a new way of writing short stories. Characters and situations from other books reappear again and again, demanding to be accommodated with a definitive written fate. In this book, Saer’s poetic brilliance is tangible: writing arising out of loss; the game between reality and perception; Golden Dorado, pea plantations, heat waves and a historic drought provide the setting for the mysterious return of a man who had disappeared from the village without a trace; a woman leaving an ominously cool cellar and the memory of ancient smells; a man involved in a relationship with a third party; the paragraphs of a draft text; a poem recited in two sections and a jar of lemonade in the midday silence.

Saer creates a world whose ‘sense of place’ uses the effect of realism to replace the real: an art only possible in the best kind of literature.