El paisano Aguilar (1934), a novel with a rural environment that was praised by Borges. Interpreter of myths, superstitions who knew how to embody the most secret symbols of the behavior of the countryman, that peasant heir to the virtues of the gaucho, a gaucho desecrated in time, regardless of the archetype and the topic, used and abused literarily in previous decades. For this reason, it is important to point out how, in the context of the Uruguayan literature process, Amorim knew how to transcend the conventions of wild or flowery gauchism, to capture the new reality of the «oriental countryman», as the narrator Juan José Morosoli would later do.

Amorim practices a realism not necessarily limited to reality and as a restless and attentive observer of the avant-garde movements that reached the Río de la Plata in those years, he oscillates between the trend that drove him to thematic and stylistic experimentation and his roots in a rural world that he knew very well since childhood, hesitates between innovation and tradition. His characters live that vital "devilish coming and going" between the city and the country that the protagonist of El paisano Aguilar discovers, a true constant in most of the rest of his work.

From this true existential dichotomy, arises that of his work divided between the country and the city, the wandering transhumance and the imperative need for roots, between the individualistic freedom of man and the writer's commitment to his time and his people. In this dichotomy one can perceive the vast antinomy of the literature of the time, but, above all, that of his own life, split between the flattery of success and the natural sympathy with which he won friends and developed in worldly society. and the responsibility that he felt anointed in the face of the unjust reality that surrounded him, a true commitment to change that he was betting on politically.

Author

Enrique Amorim. He was born in Salto (Uruguay). His parents were wealthy ranchers. His father was of Portuguese descent, while his mother was of Basque descent. Amorim traveled extensively in Europe and Latin America, meeting many literary personalities. Finally, he settled in Salto, in a house designed by himself based on the principles of Le Corbusier. During the 1920s, Amorim wrote for the leftist magazine Los Pensadores and published with the Claridad press. Both the magazine and the printing press were associated with the leftist group Boedo. In 1947, Amorim joined the Communist Party of Uruguay. His novels include: Eva Burgos (1960); Faker's Fair (1952); The murderer unveiled (1946); The moon was made with water (1944); The horse and his shadow (1941); The uneven age (1938); The countryman Aguilar (1934); The cart (1929).