Dalmiro Antonio Sáenz (Buenos Aires, June 13, 1926 - idem, September 11, 2016) 1 was an Argentine writer and playwright.
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He began his literary activity early, and published at the age of 30, after traveling by ship through Patagonia for several seasons (where he would settle for almost 15 years and where his first story books take place) Seventy times seven, which won the prestigious Prize from Editorial Emecé and became a best-seller, supported by a violent, sexual vision and solid precepts and moral questions about religion, which would become the hallmark of Sáenz for several years.
Some time later he participated in the adaptation of the script for the big screen of two of his Seventy Times Seven stories that came together to put together the plot of the homonymous film directed by Leopoldo Torre Nilson (1962).
After this beginning, Sáenz won the LIFE Magazine Award in Spanish, in 1963, with his book of stories No.
The same year (1963) he won the Argentores Award (General Society of Authors of Argentina) with Thirty, Thirty, a story set in the manner of American Westerns, but set in Patagonia.
The following year (1965) he published in the Editorial Emecé The necessary sin, a novel that he later adapted to make the script of his film version, renamed Nobody heard Cecilio Fuentes scream, directed by Fernando Siro, who in 1965 won the Silver Shell at the San Sebastián International Film Festival (Spain).
Then he began to write theater and was immediately awarded the Casa de las Américas Prize, in Havana (Cuba), in 1966 with Hip… Hip… Ufa! later published by Editorial Emecé. Later also adapted by the author for the cinema with the title of Ufa with sex and the direction of Rodolfo Kuhn (1972); and then again adapted again with Pablo Silva in the theatrical piece entitled Sex, lies and money (Buenos Aires, 2002/2003).
Sáenz between book and book and according to his statements, he took literary vacations, writing small humorous books, which were very successful. Among them, it is worth noting I was also a sperm at Editorial Torres Agüero.
Then Sáenz began an intimate and detailed description of the female universe, with a surprising and original vision, which quickly became a best-seller with the title of Open Letter to my future ex-wife published by Editorial Emecé in 1968, and reissued several times, up to the 1999 version.
His next play ¿Qué, yo ?, published in 1969, was performed almost without interruptions since its publication, becoming a classic of the absurdity of the Argentine theater scene. He also worked as a film scriptwriter, writing several titles, including one for the comic actor Luis Sandrini, in the film Kuma-ching, under the direction of Daniel Tinayre.
When the Argentine military dictatorship happened –1976 / 1983- Sáenz received death threats and had to leave the country, into exile, and after a tour he settled in Punta del Este, Uruguay. He does not write during that period.
He returned to literature in 1983 with a historical novel El Argentinazo and won the SADE (Argentine Society of Writers) Belt of Honor, which would later become a theatrical work, in which he works on its adaptation with Francisco Javier, also director of the piece, staged with his group Los Volatineros, at the National Cervantes theater in 1985.
Then he takes up the police stories, already hinted at in his stories, with On their open eyelids a fly walked, a 1986 nouvelle, which also gives rise to a new theatrical version of it, written by Sáenz and entitled Las boludas (which later became Taken to the cinema) and El satiro de la laughter (based on real events).
He is dedicated to researching, in association with Dr. Alberto Cormillot, the Dead Sea manuscripts and the figure of Jesus of Nazareth. Both travel through Israel, Egypt, New York, interviewing personalities related to the subject, and everything leads to the publication of the book Cristo de pie (Editorial Planeta, 1995 and 1998).
Sáenz continues his particular, human, erotic and poetic vision of the Argentine caudillos with his historical novels La Patria equivocada (Editorial Planeta, 1991), Malón blanco (Ed. Emecé 1995) and My forgetfulness / Or what General Paz did not say in his memoirs (from 1998, Editorial Sudamericana).
Then he publishes How to be a writer (2004) with some formulas on how he wrote his best stories, and the novel Shepherd of bats.
Many of his works have been translated and published in different languages, and his stories make up numerous compilations, including Latin Blood by Donald Yates (The best crimes and detective stories of South America / Editorial Herder and Herder New York 1972); o The best Patagonian stories by María Correas and Cristian Aliaga, Editorial Ameghino Buenos Aires 1988, among others.
He lived in Buenos Aires (Argentina), where he worked as a writer, coordinated his literary workshop and also made cultural comments on radio programs, as well as writing freelance articles for the most prestigious newspapers and magazines. A prolific writer and author of numerous best-sellers, Dalmiro Sáenz's plays are among the most widely performed in Argentina.
