La historia es una especie de alucinación. Son las macabras y horripilantes memorias de un niño (o niña, porque se llama a sí misma niña pero todo el mundo la trata como si fuera un niño) que se llama César Aira. Este fue el primer relato que contribuyó a crear una leyenda alrededor de este escritor de culto y uno de los más excéntricos entre los excéntricos, admirado sin reservas por escritores como Enrique Vila-Matas y Sergio Pitol

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 married to Artola s daughter? 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 wind-up 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 the figures are disturbingly reminiscent of the dinner party. And how can the citizens save their town when deep down there is always such a dark thirst for life?"

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

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 treasure, and becomes a very wealthy man. Even so, César’s bid for world domination comes first and so he attends a literary conference to be near the man whose clone he hopes will lead an army to victory: the world-renowned Mexican author, Carlos Fuentes. A comic science fiction fantasy of the first order, The Literary Conference is the perfect vehicle for César Aira’s take over of literature in the 21st century

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 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 Piñero 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 César Aira the magesterial author sends the very human doctor stumbling toward the biggest trap of all, in this magical book

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."

En una remota provincia china, un campesino sutil se extravía en un hechizo de amor. Como casi todos los amores, este es imposible. Pero Lu Hsin, ingenioso y paciente, decide crear una posibilidad a partir de la nada. La tarea le lleva casi toda la vida.Esta fábula erótica, atemporal y eterna aunque inelidublemente china, sucede sobre el fondo agotado de veinte años cruciales en la historia del Imperio de la Porcelana: los que van entre la Larga Marcha y la Revolución Cultural. La hidráulica, la pintura, la política, la vida cotidiana en una pequeña aldea, y una colorida galería de personajes, marcan el paso del tiempo de la ficción, que se revela en el desenlace como el fulminante momento de la realidad y el amor