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The Missing Year of Juan Salvatierra

At the age of nine, Juan Salvatierra became mute following a horse riding accident. At twenty, he began secretly painting a series of long rolls of canvas in which he minutely detailed six decades of life in his village on Argentina’s river frontier with Uruguay.

After the death of Salvatierra, his sons return to the village from Buenos Aires to deal with their inheritance: a shed packed with painted rolls stretching over two miles in length and depicting personal and communal history.

Museum curators from Europe come calling to acquire this strange, gargantuan artwork. But an essential one of its rolls is missing. A search that illuminates the links between art and life ensues, as an intrigue of family secrets buried in the past cast their shadows on the present.

Pedro Mairal made a splash with his debut novel, Una noche con Sabrina Love, which tells the story of an 18-year-old boy who wins a night with a porn star of his dreams.

That book was made into a film by Alejandro Agresti and was widely translated. Mairal, who was born in Buenos Aires in 1970, is a professor of English literature; he has been recognized as one of the most original voices in Latin American literature today, and in 1998 was awarded the Premio Clarín. He is also the author of the book of short stories Hoy temprano and the novel El año del desierto.

In 2007 he was included in the Bogotá 39, which named the best Latin American authors. 

The Missing Year of Juan Salvatierra

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This post is also available in: العربية (Arabic)