César Aira

Marcia is sixteen, overweight and unhappy. One day, as she's walking down a Buenos Aires street, she hears a shout: 'Wannafuck?' Startled, she turns round and is confronted by two punk girls Lenin and Mao. Soon, she's beguiled by them and the possibilities they open up. But the two have little time for a philosophical discussion of love: they need proof, and with their own savage logic the duo, calling themselves the Commando of Love, hold up a supermarket as the novel climaxes in an unforgettable splatter-fest finale.

In Korea, a little Buddhist monk (really very dwarf-sized) dreams of the Western world and secretly reads up on Western culture. When he meets the holidaying French couple Napoleon Chirac and Jacqueline Bloodymary he offers his services as their guide, in the hope they will take him, a penniless monk, to Europe. He whisks them off on a tour of the temples. Among the many twists and turns, our stunned tourists encounter a suicidal horse and discover that a person can also be a robot. Though our monk appears to them as the very spirit of tourism, nothing is natural in this tour de force of Aira's twisted imagination.

In nineteenth-century Argentina, Ema, a delicate woman of indeterminate origins, is captured by soldiers and taken, along with with her newborn babe, to live as a concubine in a crude fort on the very edges of civilization. The trip is appalling (deprivations and rapes prevail along the way), yet the real story commences once Ema arrives at the fort, where she takes on a succession of lovers among the soldiers and Indians, leading to a brave and grand entrepreneurial experiment. As is usual with Aira's work, the wonder of the book is in the details of customs, beauty, and language, and the curious, perplexing reality of human nature.

En las calles del barrio Flores de Buenos Aires una serie de personajes en situaciones extremas intenta sobrevivir al derrumbe de un pa s y de sus terribles consecuencias. La crisis argentina obliga a un matrimonio mayor a aceptar un empleo como repartidores de pizzas con horario nocturno. Aldo y Rosita Peyr recorren las calles de Flores, un barrio de Buenos Aires, como dos adolescentes, dispuestos a plantar cara al desastre econ mico. En sus recorridos nocturnos ven de cerca las consecuencias directas de la crisis: delincuencia, familias que duermen en la calle, bandas juveniles haciendo destrozos, viejos y ni os abandonados, borrachos... Entre estos personajes y varias situaciones extremas destaca el secuestro y posterior asesinato de un ni o, Jonathan, reflejo del horror subterr neo que sacude a toda la sociedad argentina. El caso de Jonathan es el detonante de una serie de actos corruptos en los que est n envueltos muchos de los amigos que acompa an a Aldo y Rosita en el reparto. Tambi n hay instituciones mezcladas en dicho asunto, pero tal vez, aunque a priori parezca absurdo, un convento sea la clave del misterio..." ENGLISH DESCRIPTION In the streets of the Flores neighborhood in Buenos Aires, a series of characters in extreme situations tries to survive the collapse of a country and its terrible consequences. The Argentinean crisis obliges an older couple to take on a job delivering pizzas at night. Aldo and Rosita Peyr travel the streets of Flores, a neighborhood in Buenos Aires, like two teenagers, ready to face the economic disaster. In their nighttime journeys, they see up close the direct consequences of the crisis: crime, families sleeping in the street, gangs doing damage, abandoned elderly people and children, drunks, etc. Among these people and various extreme situations is the kidnapping and subsequent killing of a boy, Jonathan, a reflection of the underground horror shaking all of Argentinean society. Jonathan's case triggers a series of corrupt actions in which many of Aldo and Rosita's pizza delivery colleagues are involved. There are also institutions involved in the mix, but perhaps, though it might seem absurd, a convent could be the key to the mystery...

In a small town in Argentina, a seamstress is sewing a wedding dress. All of a sudden she fears that her son has been kidnapped and driven off to Patagonia. She gives chase in a taxi. Her husband finds out and takes off after her – to the end of the world, to the place where monsters are born, and where the southern wind falls hopelessly in love.

Una peque a m quina de fabricar belleza, una manera feliz de describir la a veces invisible luz argentina. Johan Moritz Rugendas, a quien el mismo Humboldt admiraba como un maestro en el arte pict rico de la fisonom a de la naturaleza, fue el mejor de los pocos pintores viajeros que hubo en Occidente. De su segundo viaje a Am rica resultaron miles de leos, acuarelas y dibujos cuyo objeto fueron primordialmente las selvas y las monta as tropicales. Pero el objetivo secreto de su viaje fue Argentina: solo all , pensaba, podr a encontrar el reverso de su arte. La visit en dos ocasiones: en 1847, en Buenos Aires, registr en abundancia los paisajes y tipos rioplatenses, y fue sta su visita m s fruct fera. Diez a os antes, sin embargo, una breve y dram tica visita a Mendoza le dio la ocasi n de aventurarse al centro so ado. Sobre el rastro de las carreteras gigantes, Rugendas se puso en el camino de la recta interpampeana a la espera de aquello que, por fin, desafiara a su l piz y lo obligara a crear un procedimiento nuevo. Lo acompa el pintor alem n Robert Krauze. Sin duda, Rugendas roz , al menos por unos instantes, ese centro imposible, solo que a un precio muy alto, casi exorbitante. Un extra o episodio, que no pudo evitar absorber, salvajemente, en su cuerpo entero, interrumpi la traves a y marc de un modo irreversible, y fulminante, su vida, su arte y su juventud. ENGLISH DESCRIPTION Johan Moritz Rugendas, whom Humboldt himself admired as a master in the pictorial art of capturing nature scenes, was the best of the few traveling painters the western world had. His second trip to the Americas resulted in thousands of oils, watercolors, and drawings, primarily of the jungles and tropical mountains. But the secret objective of his journey was Argentina: only there, he thought, could he find the other side of his art. He visited it on two occasions: in 1847, in Buenos Aires, he recorded in abundance the landscapes of the R o de la Plata, and this was his most fruitful visit. Ten years earlier, however, a brief and dramatic visit to Mendoza had given him a chance to journey to the heart of his dreams. German painter Robert Krauze accompanied him. Without a doubt, Rugendas reached that impossible center, at least for an instant, but at an exorbitantly high price. A strange episode, which he couldn't keep from savagely absorbing into his entire body, interrupted the journey and left an indelible print on his life, his art, and his youth.

One Saturday night a bankrupt bachelor in his sixties and his mother dine with a wealthy friend. They discuss their endlessly connected neighbors. They talk about a mysterious pit that opened up one day, and the old bricklayer who sometimes walked to the cemetery to cheer himself up. Anxious to show off his valuable antiques, the host shows his guests old windup toys and takes them to admire an enormous doll. Back at home, the bachelor decides to watch some late night TV before retiring. The news quickly takes a turn for the worse as, horrified, the newscaster finds herself reporting about the dead rising from their graves, leaving the cemetery, and sucking the blood of the living--all somehow, disturbingly reminiscent of the dinner party.

Three novels by Cesar Aira combines three short novels by the cult Argentinian writer in one beautifully designed box set. Irreverent, playful, provocative and prolific, Argentinian author Cesar Aira has written over seventy books and has been acknowledged internationally to be one of the most original and provocative authors in world literature. Collected here are three of his novellas, to be published for the very first time in the UK. In Ghosts, an immigrant worker's family are squatting on the haunted construction site of a luxury condominium building. All of the workmen and their families see the ghosts which float around the place, but one teenage girl's interest in them becomes so intense that her mother realizes her life is in the balance. An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter tells of a point in the life of German painter Johann Moritz Rugendas, when he visits Latin America to paint its spectacular landscapes. There, a strange episode interrupts his trip and irreversibly marks him for life. And in The Literary Conference, a young translator called Cesar Aira travels to a literary conference, intent on world domination . . . Praise for Cesar Aira:'Once you've started reading Aira, you don't want to stop' Roberto Bolaño'Aira is firmly in the tradition of Jorge Luis Borges and W. G. Sebald' Los Angeles Times

The Musical Brain & Other Stories consists of twenty stories about oddballs, freaks, and crazy people from the writer The New York Review of Books calls the novelist who can t be stopped. The author of at least eighty novels, most of them barely 96 pages each, with just nine of them so far published into English, Aira s work, and his fuga hacia adelante or flight forward into the unknown has already given us imponderables to ponder, bizarre and seemingly out of context plotlines to consider, thoughtful, and almost religious, certainly passionate takes on everyday reality. The Musical Brain is the best sampling of Aira s creativity so far, and a most exhilarating collection of characters, places, and ideas."

Daily conversations in outdoor cafes with cultured friends can help make reality a little more real. Unfortunately, however, during one such conversation, one man spots a gold Rolex watch on a TV soap opera s goatherd. This seemingly small absurdity sets off alarms: strange sensations of deception, distress, and incipient madness. The two men s uneasiness soon becomes a nightmare as the TV adventure advances with a real-life plot involving a mutant strain of killer algae to take over the world The Conversations, a reality within a fiction within a parallel reality, is hilariously funny and surprisingly touching."

Maxi, a middle-class, directionless ox of a young man who helps the trash pickers of Buenos Aires's shantytown, attracts the attention of a corrupt, trigger-happy policeman who will use anyone -- including two innocent teenage girls -- to break a drug ring that he believes is operating within the slum. A strange new drug, a brightly lit carousel of a slum, the kindness of strangers, gunplay... no matter how serious the subject matter, and despite Aira's "fascination with urban violence and the sinister underside of Latin American politics" (The Millions), Shantytown, like all of Aira's mesmerizing work, is filled with wonder and mad invention.

C sar Aira 's newest novel in English is not about a conventional doctor. Single, in his forties, and poor, Dr. Aira is a skeptic. His personality his weaknesses, whims, and pet peeves is summed up in a series of digressions and regressions but he has a very special gift for miracles. He no longer cares about miracles, however, and has no faith in them. Perhaps he is even a little ashamed about his supernatural powers. Such is Dr. Aira, who also has to confront his arch-enemy chief of the Pi ero Hospital, Dr. Actyn who is constantly trying to prove that Dr. Aira is a charlatan. Poor Dr. Aira is indeed a worker of miracles, but C sar Aira the magesterial author sends the very human doctor stumbling toward the biggest trap of all, in this magical book.

On a building site of a new, luxury apartment building, visitors looked up at the strange, irregular form of the water tank that crowned the edifice, and the big parabolic dish that would supply television images to all the floors. On the edge of the dish, a sharp metallic edge on which no bird would have dared to perch, three completely naked men were sitting, with their faces turned up to the midday sun; no one saw them, of course. from GhostsGhosts is about a construction worker's family squatting on a building site. They all see large and handsome ghosts around their quarters, but the teenage daughter is the most curious. Her questions about them become more and more heartfelt until the story reaches a critical, chilling moment when the mother realizes that her daughter's life hangs in the balance.

A fictional account based on the life and work of nineteenth-century German painter Johan Moritz Rugendas traces his visit to Argentina for the purpose of achieving in art a "physiognomic totality" of his scientific vision, a quest during which he pays an enormous price for his success. Original.