César Aira

Det är 1957, sommaren innan berättaren ska flytta till Buenos Aires och börja läsa på universitetet. Men först en vistelse på landet med familjen, där han djupt försjunken i böckernas värld till en början knappt tar någon notis om att Margarita och hennes beryktade far anlänt. Fadern som haft ett finger med i alla de senaste årens politiska strider i Argentina, och Margarita som aldrig tidigare gjort något särskilt avtryck. Men just det förändras svindlande snabbt den här sommaren. Med litteraturen och det bedrägliga minnet som filter gör César Aira en tillbakablick pa ungdomens känslostormar och det där första såret som för alltid kommer att vara det djupaste.Argentinaren César Aira (född 1949) är en unik figur i litteraturvärlden. Sedan 70-talet har han givit ut över 120 böcker och skapat en genre som är helt hans egen: korta, ofta runt 100 sidor långa romaner om udda personer som stångas med lika udda idéer. Han är experimentell, ironisk och oförutsägbar och säger själv att hans sätt att skriva är en ständig flykt framåt, med vilket han menar att han improviserar sig fram och aldrig blickar bakåt. I den spansktalande världen betraktas Aira som en av de största i sin generation och 2021 tilldelades han det prestigefyllda Formentorpriset. Lina Wolff är författare och översättare från spanska. Hon har tidigare bland annat översatt Gabriel García Márquez och Roberto Bolaño.

En man ägnar natten åt att rekonstruera dagens samtal med en vän. De diskuterade en Hollywoodfilm de bara sett brottstycken av på teve, men hade helt olika uppfattning om den guldiga Rolexklocka som skymtades på den fattiga ukrainska fåraherde som filmen verkade handla om. Deras konflikt kring detta, enligt den ene, uppenbara konstnärliga misstag blir startskottet för ett långt, vindlande samtal om fiktionens, minnets och verklighetens många skikt. Argentinaren César Aira (född 1949) är en unik figur i litteraturvärlden. Sedan 70-talet har han givit ut över 120 böcker och skapat en genre som är helt hans egen: korta, ofta runt 100 sidor långa romaner om udda personer som stångas med lika udda idéer. Han är experimentell, ironisk och oförutsägbar och säger själv att hans sätt att skriva är en ständig flykt framåt, med vilket han menar att han improviserar sig fram och aldrig blickar bakåt. I den spansktalande världen betraktas Aira som en av de största i sin generation och 2021 tilldelades han det prestigefyllda Formentorpriset. Lina Wolff är författare och översättare från spanska. Hon har tidigare bland annat översatt Gabriel García Márquez och Roberto Bolano.

A divorce leads a man to Buenos Aires. In a trendy cafe he witnesses a minor accident involving Enrique, the owner of his guest house; this accident reunites Enrique with a childhood friend, with whom he had miraculously escaped from a raging fire in a miniature replica of a boarding school. So starts a true master-yarn from Booker finalist Aira.

The Divorce tells about a man who takes a vacation from Providence, R.I. in early December to avoid conflicts with his newly divorced wife and small daughter. He travels to Buenos Aires and there, one afternoon, he encounters a series of the most magical coincidences. While sitting at an outdoor caf , absorbed in conversation with a talented video artist, a young man with a bicycle is thoroughly drenched by a downpour of water seemingly from rain caught the night before in the overhead awning. The video artist knows the cyclist, who knew a mad hermetic sculptor, whose family used to take the Hindu God Krishna for walks in the neighborhood. More meetings, more whimsical and clever stories continue to weave reality with the absurd until the final, brilliant, wonderful, cataclysmic ending.

Artforum is certainly one of C sar Aira's most charming, quirky, and funny books to date. Consisting of a series of interrelated stories about his compulsion to collect Artforum magazine, this is not about art so much as it is about passionate obsession. At first we follow our hapless collector from magazine shops to used bookstores hunting for copies of Artforum. A friend alerts him to a copy somewhere and he obsesses about actually going to get it--will the shop be open, will the copy already be sold? Finally he takes out a subscription, but then it never comes, so he hounds the mailman. There's the day his stash of Artforums gets rained on, but only one absorbs the water. And interspersed is a wacky chapter about the mystery of the broken clothespins. "How weird." "How crazy."

Este volumen re ne diez de las mejores novelas del gran autor argentino, C sar Aira, con selecci n y prefacio de Juan Pablo Villalobos. «Hace tiempo descubrimos que la gran novela de C sar Aira se estaba escribiendo con la acumulaci n de sus decenas de novelitas, que alcanzaron la centena en 2018. Los devotos fuimos atesor ndolas como si se tratara de los fasc culos de una enciclopedia secreta, ya que, adem s, iban public ndose con rapidez por aqu y por all , de manera esquiva -un gesto m s propio de un artista contempor neo que de un escritor. En el camino nos acostumbramos a que algunas de las entregas tuvieran s lo diez o quince p ginas, a que asumieran formas diversas- digresiones ensay sticas, cr nicas inveros miles, cuentos de hadas-, a que cuestionaran conscientemente las reglas de aquello que suele considerarse "escribir bien". Porque, al fin y al cabo, qu podemos esperar de una obra de C sar Aira? Cualquier cosa: un artefacto ingenioso e impredecible, una miniatura narrativa que renueva, una y otra vez, la literatura. Este volumen re ne por vez primera diez novelas publicadas en editoriales peque as y que en muchos casos estaban fuera de circulaci n. Diez piezas del ins lito rompecabezas airano una novela de zombies, una teor a y pr ctica del humor, la biograf a de un m sico de jazz genial, o el relato delirante de la huida de dos personajes diminutos dentro de la maqueta de un colegio, entre otras. Diez razones que confirman a C sar Aira como uno de los narradores m s asombrosos de la literatura actual. . -Juan Pablo VillalobosEste volumen incluye las novelas: Cecil Taylor, La costurera y el viento, Las conversaciones, El divorcio, Los dos payasos, El volante, La confesi n, La pastilla de hormona, La cena y Diario de la hepatitis. ENGLISH DESCRIPTION This volume compiles ten of the best novels by the great Argentine author, Cesar Aira, with selection and preface made by Juan Pablo Villalobos. "Some time ago we discovered that Cesar Aira's great novel was being written little by little with the collection of dozens of his short novels; in 2018 they reached the hundreds. We, his devoted followers, were treasuring them as if they were the fascicles of a secret encyclopedia, since they were quickly being published here and there, in an subtle way. "Along the way we got used to some only being ten to fifteen pages long; we knew to expect different forms, and to consciously question the rules of what was considered "to write well." Because, after all, what can we expect from Cesar Aira's works? Anything: a clever and unpredictable piece, a miniature narrative that revives and invigorates, literature. "Now for the first time, this volume compiles ten novels originally published by small publishing houses and that in many cases were no longer available to readers. Ten pieces of the unusual and curious Airanian puzzle: Cecil Taylor / Cecil Taylor, La costurera y el viento / The seamstress and the wind, Las conversaciones / Conversations, El divorcio / Divorce, Los dos payasos / Two clowns, El volante / The Flyer, La confesi n / Confession, La pastilla de hormona / The hormone pill, La cena / Dinner, and Diario de la hepatitis / Diary of hepatitis. These ten reasons ratify Cesar Aira as one of the most amazing narrators of current-day literature." - Juan Pablo Villalobos

`Suddenly it hits you: you're not twenty; you're not young any more . . . and in the meantime, while you were thinking about something else, the world has changed.'Birthday begins with a fiftieth birthday. It comes and goes without fanfare, but just a few months later, an apparently banal comment that reveals a gap in the author's knowledge of the world prompts him to sit down in a cafe and write. As he sifts through anecdotes and weaves memories together, Aira reflects on the origin of his beliefs and his incapacity to live, on literature understood from the author's and the reader's point of view, on death and the Last Judgement.

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

A delightful fictional memoir about C sar Aira's small hometown. The narrator, born the same year and now living in the same great city (Buenos Aires) as C sar Aira, could be the author himself. Beginning with his parents--an enigmatic handsome black father who gathered linden flowers for his sleep-inducing tea and an irrational, crippled mother of European descent--the narrator catalogs memories of his childhood: his friends, his peculiar first job, his many gossiping neighbors, and the landscape and architecture of the provinces. The Linden Tree beautifully brings back to life that period in Argentina when the poor, under the guiding hand of Eva Per n, aspired to a newly created middle class.As it moves from anecdote to anecdote, this charming short novella--touching, funny, and sometimes surreal--invites the reader to visit the source of Aira's extraordinary imagination.

Kaksi lesbopunkkarityttöä, Mao ja Lenin, ovat Todisteen pelottavat ja kenties traagisetkin päähenkilöt, joista toinen ”vainoaa” 17-vuotiasta teiniä ja väittää olevansa rakastunut tähän. Lopussa hän todistaa rakkautensa nihilistisen anarkistisella tavalla. Lukija ajautuu peruuttamattomasti Airan käänteiseen maisemaan, jossa todellisuudentaju katoaa ja tilalle astuu hallitsematon, villi logiikka.Illallisessa konkurssin tehnyt poikamies kyläilee äiteineen varakkaan ystävän luona. Illallisen jälkeen isäntä esittelee kallisarvoista antiikkilelujen kokoelmaansa. Kotiin palattuaan poikamies katselee kaikessa rauhassa televisiota, kun kuolleet alkavat nousta haudoistaan ja kulkea zombeina pois hautausmaalta.Miten he muistuttavatkaan ikivanhoja jousesta vedettäviä leluja...

Seeing double rows of elegant lime trees around the main square of his hometown of Colonel Pringles, our narrator - who could well be the author himself, although nothing is guaranteed in a book by Cesar Aira - suddenly recalls the Sunday mornings of his childhood, when his father would take him to gather the lime-flower blossoms from which he made tea. Beginning with his father, handsome and `black' and working-class, and his strikingly grotesque mother, the narrator quickly leaps from anecdote to anecdote, bringing to life his father's dream of upward mobility, the dashing of their family's hopes when the Peronist party fell from power, the single room they all shared, and his mother's litany of political rants, which were used - like the lime-flower tea - to keep his father calm. Aira's charming fictional memoir is a colourful mosaic of a small-town neighbourhood, a playful portrait of the artist as a child and an invitation to visit the source of Aira's own extraordinary imagination.

The Little Buddhist Monk is a story of Asian invention gone wild, as a diminutive Korean Buddhist monk acts as a tour guide to an increasingly distraught French couple on a working vacation in the Far East. The Proof brings us quickly back to the West, where two punks, plus a new recruit ("Wannafuck?" is the opening line as the two punk lesbians accost the chubby and shy Marcia on a quiet street in Buenos Aires), take control of a local supermarket with dire consequences for the hostages. These two Aira works are as different as night and day. Nevertheless, sex, identity, and modern day economics figure deeply in both of these fast-paced, edgy fictions.

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.