In 1990, he shared the Silver Condor Award for Best Original Screenplay for the film Las veredas de Saturno [es].
Born in Serodino, a small town in the Santa Fe Province, to Syrian immigrants originally from Damascus, Saer studied law and philosophy at the National University of the Littoral, where he taught History of Cinematography.
In 2012, the first instalment of his previously unpublished working notebooks were edited and published as Papeles de trabajo by Seix Barral in Argentina.
Like several of his contemporaries (Ricardo Piglia, César Aira, Roberto Bolaño), Saer's work often builds on particular and highly codified genres, such as detective fiction (The Investigation), colonial encounters (The Witness), travelogues (El río sin orillas), or canonical modern writers (e.g. Proust, in The One Before and Joyce, in "Sombras sobre vidrio esmerilado").
Four of his novels - The Investigation (La Pesquisa), The Witness (El Entenado), La grande [es] and The Sixty-Five Years of Washington (Glosa [es]) - appear on various lists made by Latin American and Spanish writers and critics of recent great books in the Spanish language.