The Desert and Its Seed chronicles the aftermath of an attack identical to the one that Baron Biza’s father perpetrated against his mother. Baron Biza maintains [a] mixture of unflinching scrutiny and cool lyricism through the novel. It feels strikingly of the moment, as a resurgent feminist movement draws attention to the wide scope of misogyny.
Jorge Baron Biza (1942-2001) was a journalist and professor, who also worked for various Argentinian publishing houses. His family’s tragic lives are documented in several books, including The Desert and Its Seed.
Translated by Camilo Ramirez
The Desert and Its Seed opens with a taxi ride to the hospital: a recently- separated wife’s face is disintegrating from acid thrown by her ex-husband while they signed divorce papers. Mario, their son, tries to wipe the acid from his mother’s cheeks but his own fingers burn.
What follows is a fruitless attempt to reconstruct her face— first in Buenos Aires, thereafter in Milan. Mario, the narrator, becomes the shadow and witness of the reconstruction attempts to repair his mother’s outraged flesh. In this role, he must confront his own terrible existence and identity, both of which are bound to an Argentina he sees disintegrating around him.
Based on his own true, tragic family story, Jorge Barón Biza’s The Desert and Its Seed was rejected by publishers in Buenos Aires and was finally self- published in 1998, three years before the author committed suicide. Written in a captivating plain style with dark, bitter humor, The Desert and Its Seed has become a modern classic, published to enormous acclaim throughout the Spanish-speaking world and translated into many languages and now, for the first time, into English.
The Desert and Its Seed chronicles the aftermath of an attack identical to the one that Baron Biza’s father perpetrated against his mother. Baron Biza maintains [a] mixture of unflinching scrutiny and cool lyricism through the novel. It feels strikingly of the moment, as a resurgent feminist movement draws attention to the wide scope of misogyny.
Elegant prose.
