As a diplomat he lived for some time in Istanbul, a city to which he devoted the memoirs A orillas del Bósforo, Estocolmo, San Petersburgo, Bucarest, Berlín y México (On the banks of the Bosphorus, Stockholm, St Petersburg, Bucharest, Berlin and Mexico).
His county comprised Besalú, the Fenouillèdes, Capcir, the Baridà, the valley of Orillas, that of Lillet, the Berguedà, the Ripollés, the Vallespir, the upper plain of Roussillon from Illa de Tet to Sant Esteve del Monasterio, Conflent, the Donasà, and Peyrepertuse.
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 La mayor and Joyce, in "Sombras sobre vidrio esmerilado").