In Juan José Saer’s Nobody Nothing Never, the banks of the Paraná River frame a sparse but charged narrative: Cat Garay and Elisa try to protect their horse while a horse-killer is at large. The river setting holds together the novel’s personal and political tensions, as the lovers’ affair and the hunt unfold against a wider atmosphere of anxiety and disintegration.

Setting and Events

The action takes place during a stifling Argentine summer. Cat Garay, heir to a once-prosperous family now in decline, and Elisa are drawn into the search for the person killing horses. The river’s banks are the stated location of that hunt, linking the couple’s effort to protect their animal with the novel’s minimal, nearly nonexistent action.

Narrative Significance

The Paraná River setting belongs to a story whose events are repeatedly narrated from two perspectives. Each event is first presented by an apparently objective narrator and then retold in Cat’s voice, often with the same phrases. This doubling makes the location part of the novel’s larger formal pattern: the riverbanks are a concrete setting for the hunt, while the repeated accounts place emphasis on the difference between perspectives rather than on a succession of dramatic incidents.