Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1948
For years, Guillermo Saccomano worked in scriptwriting and advertising, for Spanish, English, Italian and US publishers. In 1979 he had a a book of poems published, Partida de caza, and in 1984 his first novel, Prohibido escupir sangre was published. in 2001 he was awarded the Premio Nacional de Novela for El buen dolor, and during the following years he worked on his trilogy on political violence - La lengua del malón, El amor argentino and 77. The trilogy was a great success with both the public and the critics. His novel Cámara Gesell (2012) was awarded the Dashiell Hammett Prize.Some of his stories have been made into films and been included in several anthologies. He currently directs a fiction workshop and contributes to Página/12, a newspaper.
- "Prose as sharp and burning as a red-hot knife." Rosa Montero
- "The triumph of the art of novel-writing." Ricardo Menéndez Salmón
- “Never was there a cityscape as immersive, or a populace as rife with iniquity, as in Argentinian writer Saccomanno’s noirish Gesell Dome (..) Like Twin Peaks reimagined by Roberto Bolaño, Gesell Dome is a teeming microcosm in which voices combine into a rich, engrossing symphony of human depravity.” Publisher’s Weekly
- “Cynical and funny: a yarn worthy of a place alongside Cortázar and Donoso.” Kirkus (on Gessell Dome)
- “Like True Detective through the lenses of William Faulkner and John Dos Passos, Gesell Dome is a mosaic of misery, a page-turner that will keep you enthralled until its shocking conclusion.” Open Letter
- “A monumental novel where individual stories unnerve us while building to the unexpected and explosive finale.” El Mundo (on Gessell Dome)
- “A choral, savage, and ruthless work, considered to be the great Argentine social novel.” Europa Press (on Gessell Dome)
- “A great narrative undertaking and a meticulous fresco of social decay.” The Dashiell Hammett Prize Jury (on Gessell Dome)
Bibliography
A tale of friendship with a lyrical and exquisitely beautiful tone.
There comes a moment in life when a man looks back, reminisces, and reflects in a sort of recapitulation. His tone is not melancholic, but rather one of intimate appreciation for what has been lived. He seeks to recognize what has been happy and crucial. In the recounting of experiences and years, his friends have been a constant presence. This book is dedicated to them.
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A tale of friendship with a lyrical and exquisitely beautiful tone.
There comes a moment in life when a man looks back, reminisces, and reflects in a sort of recapitulation. His tone is not melancholic, but rather one of intimate appreciation for what has been lived. He seeks to recognize what has been happy and crucial. In the recounting of experiences and years, his friends have been a constant presence. This book is dedicated to them.
Guillermo Saccomanno tells the shared story with beloved friends who have passed away, yet the conversation continues. With the living, the exchange varies and projects towards the years to come. All are inhabitants of the coast who have traversed their own paths with countless revelations. In some cases, their perspectives on the world reveal markedly different, yet complementary, journeys. Each earns a place in the reader’s heart.
The relationship between these men, the masculine friendship so precisely described in this poignant book, takes on different forms over time; tension, the frictions of rivalry, and lessons coexist with loyalties, which hide deep and affectionate feelings that are given naturally. Mirlo is a precise portrait of dear friends, a drama that finds a lyrical tone of immense beauty.
From its opening sentence, 'Soy la peste' presents itself as a descent that is not only inward. A tale of initiation into evil, its code is survival, every man for himself in a landscape of streets desolated by a devastating plague. A nameless boy, with a resentful masculinity, must fend for himself as he flees from a city ravaged by grotesque figures and beasts no less merciless than himself. A coming-of-age novel, 'Soy la peste' is the raw portrayal of a scoundrel with no other codes than violent instinct and immediate primal pleasure. If God no longer exists, in a Dostoevskian manner, anything can be permitted. And then, the desire for catastrophe and crime ceases to be an aberrant option. Guillermo Saccomanno speaks to us about this in a novel that combusts an Arltian alternation between high and plebeian language. A hallucination of our present terrors, those that push us to think about the aftermath of this wasteland, if there will be an aftermath. Nightmare or desolate prognosis of a world that will never be the same again, 'Soy la peste' becomes a desperate text, not suitable for sensitive readers.
The beauty of the night includes its underworld. Written in the form of improvisation, 'The Ones Who Come from the Night' is a collection of scenes that, in their simultaneity, shape a single night. In the moment someone celebrates, another suffers. In the moment someone loves, another kills. This could be one of the equations posed here.
Between narrative and poem, each of these snapshots becomes a journey through the dark. In their course, instead of definitions, there are questions. Neither sociological endeavor nor attempt at anthropological research, it is, in any case, a fictional and poetic experiment of the nocturnal. Following Bataille, a clear awareness that "intimacy will be found only in the night."
Fernanda García Lao and Guillermo Saccomanno, the authors of 'Inverted Love', that insolent and unique erotic novella, return with another work written between two. This time, an imaginary cartography of darkness. 'The Ones Who Come from the Night' is an introspection that, with poetic density and lunatic humor, disturbs, seduces, or reveals what we do not want to see, what we are when the lights go out.
Antonio Dal Masetto, one of the greatest Argentine writers, died in 2015. Shortly thereafter, his friend, Guillermo Saccomanno, composed a story that reads like a requiem. He recounts Antonio’s childhood in Piedmont, World War II, Nazism and resistance in the Pavese region. Then came rootlessness, a village in the Argentine countryside, youth, initiation through his first novel reflecting Patagonia and the city, territories to be conquered. The bars in the El Bajo district, journalism and women, fatherhood and guilt, the unexpected loss of Briante and Soriano. Even after receiving literary recognition, Antonio held himself apart, solitary. His works are based on a luminous idea: a book should be like a walnut tree. As he fine-tuned his storytelling technique, he struggled with the perils of alcohol. During his last year, he sent Saccomanno the chapters of what would become his posthumous novel, which he would finish days before his death.
As he grieves, Saccomanno racks his brain to find the key moments in a relationship marked by books that comprise a style. As poetic art, Antonio is a unique text that evokes Dal Masetto and his art of living, and brings it into the present.
Testimony of the deep friendship between two writers from different generations, who shared a common language.
Novela erótica que apela a los recursos del género y a los aires libertinos para buscar cuestionarlos y trascenderlos, Amor invertido es también la experiencia paródica y gozosa, íntima y abierta de escribir a cuatro manos. Eso es lo que hicieron Guillermo Saccomanno y Fernanda García Lao partiendo de un intercambio de emails impuesto por la distancia, diseñando los primeros pasos de una trama que se fue desplegando mediante la incorporación de citas y lecturas diversas. Así, del Marqués de Sade y el misticismo erótico, a Apollinaire y Alejandra Pizarnik, desfilan en esta propuesta singular.
Abandon all hope, ye who read this novel
The paths of six characters immersed in a personal nightmare cross in a city devastated by war, where violence, death and barbarism dominate the streets. In many ways, Terrible accidente del alma is a descent into hell. Guillermo Saccomanno spares the reader no atrocities: incestuous rapes, murders, wretched sexuality. At the centre of this dystopian world, to our horror, the desolation of human souls appears before us.
This cruel, radical approach, along the same aesthetic lines as Cormac McCarthy and Elfriede Jelinek, offers no unreal compensation to soothe the reader. Rather, it focuses on reviewing, without subterfuge, a moral scale for calibrating the reality of our time.
Winner of the 2013 Dashiell Hammett Award
A cruel and ruthless radiography of our time, a ruthless portrait of a world that resembles hell
At first glance, La Villa is a tranquil, provincial seaside town, where nothing ever happens except in the summer months, when the hordes of tourists descend. But a closer look at La Villa and a handful of its residents will reveal the process of putrefaction eating away at the community’s social and moral core. Living happily side by side in La Villa are political and police corruption, drug trafficking, murder across the board, racism, homophobia, sexual abuse, domestic violence, suicide, misery... Countless small stories that go to make up an unsparing, brutal mosaic that strips bare the hypocrisy of an entire country.
“A choral, savage, and ruthless work, considered to be the great Argentine social novel.” Europa Press
“Through a skillful weaving of characters and plotlines, coming together like a completed puzzle, Saccomanno has crafted a monumental novel where individual stories unnerve us while building to the unexpected and explosive finale.” El Mundo
Orlando Balbo, “Nano” fue secuestrado. Logró sobrevivir a la cárcel de Rawson pero quedó sordo por efecto de la tortura. Se exilió en Roma gracias a monseñor Jaime de Nevares, fundador de la Asamblea Permanente por los Derechos Humanos. A su vuelta al país en 1985, partió hacia Huncal, un paraje perdido. Allí se dedicaría a la alfabetización de una comunidad mapuche, una experiencia educativa antológica, en la más cruda desolación. El Nano y Saccomanno se conocieron en el 69 cuando hacían la colimba en aquel cuartel del sur. En los años setenta, el escritor había dado por desaparecido al maestro, pero volvieron a encontrarse. El resultado es esta obra conmovedora, en la que confluyen la fuerza del educador que enfrenta la adversidad y el reclamo por un mundo más justo.
Perfectly normal men and women head to their desks every day in a city laid waste by guerrilla incursions, menaced by hordes of starving people, murderous children and cloned dogs, patrolled by armed helicopters, and plagued with acid rain. Among them is an office worker willing to be humiliated in order to keep his job – until he falls in love and allows himself to dream of someone else.
To what depths is a man willing to go to hold on to a dream? El Oficinista tells a story that happened yesterday, but still hasn’t happened, and yet is happening now. And we didn’t even notice, too tied up in our jobs, our salaries, our appearances. This novel embraces an anti-utopia, a world of Ballard but also of Dostoyevsky.
“The precision of the writing is entwined with the author’s visionary capacity.” Pere Gimferrer, member of the ‘Premio Biblioteca Breve’ jury
“A book both powerful in what it tells and brilliant in what remains silent.”
Menéndez Salmón
“A discovery; an anti-utopian moral story with raw, carefully-crafted writing; among the best I’ve read in a long time.” Rosa Montero
“A novelistic feat.” Caballero Bonald
“A strange book in the best sense of the word. This is not an ordinary novel, it will surprise many.” Rodrigo Fresán
“There's something about the book that is decidedly addictive, a real page-turner.” Yann Suty
“By inserting a cold, heartless but all-too-familiar corporate environment into an ultra-violent urban universe, El Oficinista draws a chilling portrait of the savagery and difficulty to love that characterize contemporary society, and especially of alienation produced by bureaucracy.” Charybde 27: le blog
“With spectral serenity, suggestive images, and outstanding stylistic coherence, Saccomanno ... unravels the story of a contemporary slave in only 55 chapters.” Die Welt
“Saccomanno’s artful words [...] and the dark, cinematographic atmosphere leave an indelible mark.” deutschlandfunk.de
“[Saccomanno] has a superb command of horror. El Oficinista is an existential expressionist blend of office novel and film noir.” Berliner Zeitung
Winner of the 2008 Hammett Award / Longlisted for Best Translated Book Award 2020: Fiction (US)
Buenos Aires, 1977. In the darkest days of the Videla dictatorship, Gómez, a gay high-school literature teacher, tries to keep a low profile as, one-by-one, his friends and students begin to disappear. When Esteban, one of Gómez’s favorite students, is taken away in a classroom raid, Gómez realizes that no one is safe anymore, and that asking too many questions can have lethal consequences. His life gradually becomes a paranoid, insomniac nightmare that not even his nightly forays into bars and bathhouses in search of anonymous sex can relieve. Things get even more complicated when he takes in two dissidents, putting his life at risk—especially since he’s been having an affair with a homophobic, sadistic cop with ties to the military government. Told mostly in flashbacks thirty years later, 77 is rich in descriptive detail, dream sequences, and even elements of the occult, which build into a haunting novel about absence and the clash between morality and survival when living under a dictatorship.
“A choral, savage, and ruthless work, considered to be the great Argentine social novel.” Europa Press
"77 sings a dark song of one man’s struggle to stay human when the inhumane lurks on every corner and the day-to-day reality of his world is curdled by the struggle between unchecked power and subversive acts." Ross Nervig, Southwest Review
“Like Twin Peaks reimagined by Roberto Bolaño.” Publishers Weekly
“Cynical and funny: a yarn worthy of a place alongside Cortázar and Donoso.” Kirkus Reviews
“77 is ostensibly a novel about Argentina’s Dirty War; it is also a book about reconciling inaction with survival.” World Literature Today
“A great novel. . . . I am―as we all should be―grateful for 77 and all novels like it.” Patrick Nathan, Full Stop
“77 is a taut historical thriller with noir overtones. . . . As his characters grapple with love, allegiance, and daily life under a dictatorship, every action is a form of resistance.” Foreword Reviews
Saccomanno shines a gruesome, graphic light on what people are willing to ignore so that their comfort remains intact.” Kim Fay, Los Angeles Review of Books
“The novel delves into difficult questions about what's right and wrong, even when bare-knuckle survival is the best you can hope for.” Jeff Somers, B&N Reads
“With western democracies on the descent, it’s not hard to read Saccomanno’s novel as a dystopian warning for the present.” CrimeReads
"A novel about one of the darkest periods of Argentine history, the so-called Dirty War. A book about reconciling inaction with survival." George Henson, World Literature Today
“Un libro visceral y abrasador. Una obra maestra.” Libreria Brazos, Texas (USA)
“La novela profundiza en preguntas complejas sobre el significado de lo que se considera bueno o malo, incluso cuando la supervivencia es lo mejor que puedes esperar de una situación.” Jeff Somers, B&N Reads
“77 sings a dark song of one man’s struggle to stay human when the inhumane lurks on every corner and the day-to-day reality of his world is curdled by the struggle between unchecked power and subversive acts.” Ross Nervig, Southwest Review
“This is a searing, visceral book. A masterpiece.” Brazos Bookstore, Texas (USA)
Mediados de los 50, comienzos de los 60. Un proletariado con ínfulas de clase media persigue el ascenso social. Pero las calles siguen siendo de tierra y en las casas entra el hedor de los mataderos. Éste es el paisaje donde se inicia El pibe, todo un contexto en el que las canalladas y los heroísmos chicos se entreveran con la memoria. Inmigrantes, criollos, guapos. El peronismo que divide las familias. La generosidad de Evita y el odio de los contreras. Un padre que quiere progresar y sus hermanos que se pierden en la milonga, el juego y el alcohol. La iglesia punitoria y la doble moral. Los combates del piberío por la leña para las fogatas anticipan otros combates, otros fuegos. El despertar del sexo y el terror de ser marica.
Enero de 1959. Superviviente del bombardeo de Plaza de Mayo, el joven profesor Gómez, literato, cabecita negra, simpatizante peronista, enamorado de un obrero de la carne, deambula por una Buenos Aires estremecida por los tanques y las molotov durante la toma del frigorífico Lisandro de la Torre. Gómez, para quien el amor está tan prohibido como el peronismo, busca evadirse investigando el romance entre Roberto Arlt y Evita. El escritor que inventaba medias de goma y la actriz que soñaba un destino de heroína se cruzaron en la realidad y murieron un mismo día, con diez años de diferencia. Él creía en la Revolución y ella, en la Vírgen de Itatí.
Lía es periodista de La Nación y poeta, pero también judía, de izquierda y lesbiana. Delia, su amante, es escritora y lucha por conservar las formas como mujer de un capitán golpista de la Marina. El profesor Gómez también padece una combinación explosiva: es cabecita negra, peronista, devoto de la literatura inglesa y homosexual. El joven Gómez fue testigo del amor ilícito de sus dos amigas. En esos tiempos de gobierno popular, conquistas sociales y persecuciones, que culminaron con el bombardeo del 16 de junio a la Plaza de Mayo, Delia escribió una novela que permaneció oculta hasta hoy. Ahora septuagenario, el profesor va a contar la historia de ese texto - La lengua del malón - y de la vehemencia y represión que marcaron a su autora. Porque escrita bajo el influjo del amor que no se puede nombrar, la narración de Delia es doblemente maldita. Por su carácter inconcluso y por la pasión subversiva que cuenta: la de un indio y su cautiva.
Mientras viaja hacia una playa desierta, G. se encuentra con una mujer que lo obliga a enfrentar las sombras del pasado familiar. Se obstina en escribir la historia de su padre y en esta apuesta pone al desnudo su obsesión por indagar los límites del dolor. Para G. resulta difícil conciliar vida y literatura. "Se escribe buscando una explicación. Y se encuentran sólo incógnitas". Con una estructura de tríptico y una cortante economía de lenguaje, Guillermo Saccomanno escribió un libro bello y despiadado, que es a la vez la narración de una historia y la imposibilidad de narrarla.
Roberto Arlt murió el 26 de julio de 1942 y Eva Perón el mismo día, diez años después. Este hecho fue recuperado por Guillermo Saccomano en sus novela Roberto y Eva en la que recrea la figura de Eva Duarte antes de convertirse en Evita. Eva era una joven provinciana que llega a Buenos Aires y sueña con alcanzar la fama. Conoce y se relaciona con Roberto Arlt, periodista e inventor de cosas inútiles y disparatadas. Ambos provienen del interior. Entre ellos, un tercer personaje, el Astrólogo, que presagia revoluciones y masacres. Tres marginales con historias familiares difíciles, angustiados por el provenir, deseando pertenecer a un nivel social que los aleje de su realidad.
"Puedo contar más de mi padre que él de sí", dice Guillermo Saccomanno. Y mezclando rabia, rencor y amor, lo hace. Este padre que ha sido negociante fracasado, militante gremial y extraño socialista que pretende que su hijo ingrese a la Universidad Católica, es postulante a escritor en competencia con su hijo.
El autor recuerda su vida de estudiante secundario, su paso por la Universidad, su servicio militar en el sur, sus primeros escarceos sexuales. Evoca la quema de libros, los amigos desaparecidos, el miedo, el terror. Las depresiones del padre, su propio intento de suicidio. Y en un magnífico capítulo final la visita al Viejo, que ha quedado solo, la salida de ambos y el regreso a la casa vacía, empapados por una lluvia torrencial y la conversación, todo lo que hubiera podido contarle y que no hizo, los recuerdos, la ternura.
En Prohibido escupir sangre el protagonista, un autor de historietas, es llevado a comportarse como uno de sus personajes en un ámbito en el que la competencia lleva a luchas casi de gángsteres. Como fondo, se crea un amor salvaje cuya destinataria es la enviada de una organización de prostitutas, en el paisaje opresivo de una ciudad que podría no ser Buenos Aires. Todo esto contado con un lenguaje tan directo y galopante como las onomatopeyas de una historieta.
Short stories and novellas
Guillermo Saccomanno seems to be immersed in a literary quest that goes beyond mere entertainment or superficial surprise in his short stories. Through his narrative, he confronts the challenge of interpreting the world around him, showing a raw and ruthless reality, but also authentic.
The figure of the father, as the voice demanding truth and authenticity in writing, adds a layer of complexity to his work. This demand for sincerity can be seen as a constant reminder of the writer's responsibility to his art and to those who read it. It is a call not to succumb to the temptation of falsehood or superficiality in representing reality.
Saccomanno seems to challenge the conventions of Rioplatense short stories, opting for a more extensive and detailed narrative. Instead of seeking the effectiveness of the surprising blow, he delves into deep and complex stories, where truth is revealed gradually through carefully constructed prose.
Ultimately, his work seems to be a testament to the persistence of literature as a way of interpreting and making sense of the world, even in a context where transformation seems unattainable. It is an act of resistance against resignation and apathy, an affirmation of the importance of writing as a tool for exploring the human condition and confronting the difficult realities we face.
Relatos de un presente exasperado que se transitan entre lo real, lo inquietante y fantasmático.
Entre el azar y el destino, la sordidez provocadora y la belleza esquiva, la historia que narra Esperar una ola refiere la expresividad de un observador incansable. La realidad, desde su perspectiva, sorprende y adquiere múltiples y diversas formas de la interpelación. Una mirada penetrante abarca lo familiar y lo extraño, que se proyecta sobre cada relato como una sombra de peligro.
Los habitantes de la ciudad y el conurbano, las calles desiertas y la bruma que sube del puerto, el bosque y el mar. Territorios conocidos que se enrarecen y nos cuestionan. En lo cotidiano se insinúan tanto oscuridades como revelaciones. A veces los muertos queridos mantienen su poder de intervención; otras, el deseo y los sueños se confunden. Inexorable, el amor siempre anticipa su ausencia. Como el surfista que aguarda en suspenso la marea, el narrador, atento a las voces que escucha, encadena relatos que se contestan con otro relato. Cada situación deviene un acontecimiento.
Si Cámara Gesell fue la novela coral de un pueblo de la costa bonaerense, Esperar una ola es el retrato coral de un presente exasperado. Guillermo Saccomanno nombra el mundo de nuevo con maestría; su habilidad para transitar entre un plano real, reconocible en sus más duras turbulencias, y otro inquietante y fantasmático lo confirma como un gran escritor.
El primer cuento de este libro lo escribí en el 78. El último, hace unos meses. No proporcionan una visión consoladora ni tienen un final optimista. No creo en los finales felices. Una nena con leucemia. Una clase de literatura en un penal. Mujeres fisuradas. Insomnios, fantasmas. Parejas en el precipicio. Padres e hijos fatalmente en desencuentro. Traiciones, humillaciones, resentimiento. Los paisajes están sombreados por las miserias humanas de una terminal de micros. Los personajes esperan o huyen. A veces se dejan estar. Podría decir que se trata de ficciones, pero siento que a veces están más cerca del documentalismo. Escribí estas historias por necesidad más que por gusto. Sin demasiada esperanza, como decía Karen Blixen, pero sin desesperación.
En estas historias, Guillermo Saccomanno, experto en narrar los desequilibrios y sus consecuencias, da voz a un puñado de seres al borde del abismo. Difícil no identificarse. El arco expresivo es variado pero siempre implacable. La literatura y la escritura como religión, con un lenguaje afinado al extremo.
Guillermo Saccomanno’s new book, Cuando temblamos, is a journey to the fear and anguish that live inside human beings, that today’s world does nothing but feed. Saccomanno brings together six stories where the characters are in permanent flight, running from danger, their past, or their own ghosts. A grandmother with a revolver in her purse flees to Patagonia with her grandson. A mother and daughter hit rock bottom during a night-time journey. A fugitive gets lost in a snowy forest and stumbles upon a tribe of albinos more dangerous than wolves. A father and son are trapped by helplessness after the wife runs away. An ex-convict faces her ghosts and misfortunes in a lonely hotel. Inmates in a prison at the end of the world undertake a ruthless revenge that ultimately redeems them. Wind, snow and rain accompany these stories in an inhospitable south. By the time you finish reading, fear will have quickened your pulse in a most disturbing way.
Saccomanno ha acostumbrado a sus lectores a un puñado de evidencias sobre su propia literatura: es el escritor argentino que está llevando a la práctica en forma consecuente la premisa arltiana de la prepotencia de trabajo. Un dogma que lo impulsa a producir cuentos cortos aceitados, precisos en su capacidad de sintetizar en pocas páginas las experiencias de los demás.
Un adolescente incendiario. Una diseñadora que ya no puede disimular su pavor al sida. Un periodista de policiales que sobrevive a las amenazas con alcohol y pastillas. Un empresario textil obsesionado por los celos. El nombre sugestivo de los gatos de unos jubilados, cuyos hijos son desaparecidos. Un portero resentido. Una nena obesa acosada por sus padres. Un oficinista casado enamorado de una roquera. Un padre enfermo que lucha contra la indignidad del derrumbe.
Animales domésticos es un paseo en vuelo rasante sobre las agonías de la clase media. Nuevos ricos y nuevos pobres. Trepadores y náufragos. Integrados y lúmpenes. Los personajes de Animales domésticos bien pueden ser sus lectores.
Un cuartel en el sur. Confinados en la cordillera, aguantando castigos y humillaciones, muertos de hambre y de frío, los colimbas escuchan los ecos del Cordobazo y el rock nacional. El ejército que describe Bajo bandera se dispone ya para el exterminio y anticipa la inmolación de los pibes en la Guerra de Malvinas. Bajo bandera es también un relato profético del asesinato del soldado Carrasco, que llevó a la supresión del servicio militar obligatorio.
Poetry
Única incursión del autor en el género de la poesía.
Books for children and young readers
The Boy and the Louse, tells the story of a boy that asks himself a lot of questions, and every time he does his head itches. A louse lives there very happily. However, every time the boy asks himself a question he scratches his head and the louse is in danger. One day, the boy asks himself: Why do questions itch? Because I’m here, answers the louse. And then he decides to jump to another head: the reader’s.
Ilustraciones de María Wernicke.
Ilustraciones de María Wernicke.
Prizes
- 2014 - Platinum Konex Award for his literary career between 2008-2010
- 2014 - Democracia Award, in Literature category
- 2013 - Dashiell Hammett Award, at the Semana Negra in Gijón, for Gessell Dome
- 2012 - Rodolfo Walsh Award, at the Semana Negra in Gijón, for Un maestro
- 2010 - Biblioteca Breve Award (Seix Barral) for El oficinista
- 2009 - Dashiell Hammett Award, at the Semana Negra in Gijón, for 77
- 2000 - Premio Nacional de Letras de Argentina Award for El buen dolor
- 1997 - First Premio Municipal de Literatura de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires
in category short stories for La indiferencia del mundo - 1991 - Second Premio Municipal de Literatura de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires
in category short stories for Bajo bandera - 1987 - Club de los XIII Award for Situación de peligro
- Crisis Magazine Award, in category Latinamerican Literature