“ Knock, And He'll open the door. Vanish, And He'll make you shine like the sun. Fall, And He'll raise you to the heavens. Become nothing, And He'll turn you into everything. ” ― Rumi
A sinisterly funny modern-day Through the Looking Glass that begins with cyanide poisoning and ends in strawberry ice cream."My story, the story of 'how I became a nun,' began very early in my life; I had just turned six. The beginning is marked by a vivi
An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter is the story of a moment in the life of the German artist Johan Moritz Rugendas (1802-1858). Greatly admired as a master landscape painter, he was advised by Alexander von Humboldt to travel West from Europe t
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 rin
A delirious collection of short stories from the Latin American master of microfiction, César Aira–the author of at least eighty novels, most of them barely one hundred pages long–The Musical Brain & Other Stories comprises twenty tales about odd
El argentino César Aira goza ya en España de un merecidísimo culto, que se acrecentará con Varamo, una sorprendente e hilarante historia de un escribiente de tercera panameño.
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
César 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 v
One Saturday night a bankrupt bachelor in his sixties and his mother visit a wealthy friend. They discuss their endlessly connected neighbors the daughter of what was her name? Miganne, who lived in front of Cabanillas s office Which Cabanillas? The one m
César is a translator who’s fallen on very hard times due to the global economic downturn; he is also an author, and a mad scientist hell-bent on world domination. On a visit to the beach he intuitively solves an ancient riddle, finds a pirate’s trea