Schavelzon Graham Agencia literaria Barcelona

Zama

NOVEL, 1956. EDITION BY ADRIANA HIDALGO EDITORA, 2022. 284 PAGES

First published in 1956, Zama is unanimously considered one of the great novels of the twentieth century in the Spanish language.

It narrates, using a timeless and archaic language, at times close to that of the Golden Age, the solitary and suspended existence of Don Diego de Zama, an exile, an official of the Spanish crown in Asuncion del Paraguay who, victim of an interminable wait, awaits to be transferred to Buenos Aires at the end of the XVIII century. It is a perfect book, where the philosophical quality emerges naturally from a dazzling prose.

Zama is not just any waiting, it is an existential condition, anguished and reflective, in a territory characterized by remoteness, estrangement and the willingness to remember.

«Zama is, for certain aspects of its narrative conception, comparable to the major works of existentialist narrative, such as La Náusea and El extranjero. I believe, however, that because of the circumstances in which it was written and the peculiar situation of the person who wrote it, Zama is in many ways superior to those books».

Juan José Saer