Guillermo Saccomanno presents "The Wind Will Arderá" in Mexico

Argentine writer Guillermo Saccomanno, winner of the 2025 Alfaguara Novel Prize for "Arderá el viento," is in Mexico to present the work in question, a mandatory stop on his journey through the Spanish-speaking world that forces the winner to reserve an entire year's schedule for the ambitious promotional undertaking required by an award of this magnitude.

Saccomanno meets with the literary press at the El Péndulo bookstore in Coyoacán, on the eve of the official presentation of the novel for Mexico, which, incidentally, historically sells the most copies of the winning work after the author's country of origin.

“I'll say it without demagoguery: Mexico is a country I love. This isn't my first time here. My relationship with Mexico dates back perhaps to my adolescence, when I discovered Mexican literature through Carlos Fuentes, with 'The Death of Artemio Cruz,' a novel that astonished me at 16. From there, I continued with Rulfo, Octavio Paz, an author who generates controversy, just as Borges generates controversy in Argentina. I love Mexico. Since then, I've read, not always frequently but every now and then, a Mexican author. Fernando del Paso, for example. I was never able to finish 'Palinuro de México,' but I tried, although I did read 'José Trigo.' So here I am, I've won the Alfaguara Prize, and I'm grateful for this journey through the Spanish-speaking world. While we speak the same language, it's not the same language, because we have accents, different voices, but we understand each other,” Saccomanno declares on this occasion.

"The admired Juan Rulfo, with two short novels, left everyone small, shattering the souls and minds of many. And he didn't invent anything; he simply passed by, saw the light, and entered," the author adds about the Mexican author's work.

“I don’t know if I’m a novelist”

“Small town, big hell.” That old adage, curiously inherited from 14th-century Spain and spread throughout the American colonies, has not lost its validity.

Saccomanno's novel begins with a corpse, with a crime that everyone knows about, but no one saw anything, that everyone is certain about, but no one will say a word about. Such is the case in this coastal town in Argentina, where all the characters don't see, don't hear, seem to be unaware, yet are aware of everything when they are not the protagonists of the events. Instead, the facts circulate through rumor, gossip, and whispers, which prove to be much more effective communication tools than the local media.

“Indeed, as the saying goes: 'Small town, big hell.' Everyone was where the events occurred, but no one saw anything,” comments the Argentine author, whose novel deals with the arrival in this coastal village of a family of atypical, strange characters, who will disrupt the—or, perhaps, equilibrium?—of this town where everything and nothing is known.

And Saccomanno uses a unique, hybrid, unclassifiable narrative construction. The author draws on the narrative resources learned from advertising, where he worked for many years, and even from the tools he acquired as a comic book writer.

“I don't know if I'm a novelist. I think I'm a short story writer who strives to leave a suspenseful feeling hanging in the air while simultaneously weaving together story after story. With my experience in advertising, concocting short ideas, where you have to sell mayonnaise in 15 seconds, you learn to develop a strategy of shock and suspense. The same thing happened with my experience working with almost all the important cartoonists of the Argentine comics movement. I feel like a disciple of (Héctor Germán) Oesterheld, author of 'El Eternauta,' who was a master at constructing plots and had the motto that there is no good or evil. And that's the part that interests me most.”

On the other hand, Saccomanno comments, for this story, a central priority was the construction of the town where the events take place. “Working with a town is the dream of many writers: Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio; Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha; Rulfo's Comala; García Márquez's Macondo; Onetti's Santa María. And I embraced the territory I've lived in for more than 30 years (Villa Gesell), when I fortunately retired from advertising, which is a rather toxic job, from which you don't emerge unscathed. But, going back to these so-called bastard genres, which aren't considered prestigious, comics and comics, I learned to narrate.”

The novel, the author comments, must fulfill a social function. “I don't believe a novel can change the world, but I do believe it can shed light on the dark night of the soul, as Saint John of the Cross said. I also believe that the art of the novel demands that it move, provoke, incite, and question. The novel also allows for the possibility of resorting to the techniques of serial fiction, the libertine, and noir. In this sense, I could say that two of my influences are Jim Thompson and David Goodis, who are not exactly illustrious figures but authors of genres long considered marginal.”

“You have the monster next to you”

The author is also consulted on memory in Latin American countries, on how, unfortunately, we are united by historical processes of dictatorships and dark areas of our political life that have led to complex social crises, still so vivid today.

“Memory in Argentina is a pain in the ass. If it weren't for the mothers and grandmothers of May, there would be no memory (…) The current shift to the right is horrifying, there and everywhere. In Argentina, the military dictatorship was one of the bloodiest in Latin America, partly with civilian complicity, not just capitalist complicity, the injection of the United States, which we already know. You have the monster next door; we are the real backyard, but we didn't have it any better than you, nor did you any better than us. But in Mexico, with my perspective from the outside, as a passerby, I notice a kind of optimism for Claudia (Sheinbaum),” the author comments.

It's also true, he adds, "that Argentina's last governments haven't provided economic solutions. Power is increasingly concentrated in a few hands. If there isn't an equitable distribution of wealth, with governments like the one we have now (in Argentina), with this clown (referring to Javier Milei), who liquidates ministries of labor, health, etc., if yesterday we were on the brink of the abyss, today we've taken a step forward. I believe in class struggle, and I believe that, in Argentina, unless a front is formed once and for all, we are far from a way out."

The night before this meeting, Saccomanno comments, he was watching the news from Mexico, reporting on insecurity, and he reflects: “The accusation is very good, but we need an analysis of the complexity behind it, of the drug structure, of the complicity of the politicians, the capital behind it.”

After all, he reiterates, his novel "Arderá el viento" (The Wind Will Ark) "is a kind of metaphor for what we're experiencing here, there, and everywhere. A small town is ultimately a metaphor. You just have to extrapolate it, plot it, and we'll see it clearly."

The Wind Will Burn, by Guillermo Saccomanno. Courtesy.

“The wind will burn”