Who is César Aira?
César Aira is an enigmatic Argentine writer nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2024.
In this video, I'll tell you who he is and review the book I read by this prolific author, Margarita (a memory).
We can mention other titles as examples:
Ema, the Captive
Defined by its author as a "historiola"—a blend of history and fantasy—this novel is a journey to the edge of the Patagonian desert, but not only a physical displacement; it's more of a passage into a world somewhere between magical and absurd. From a cold, seemingly anthropological narrative, a universe of savage sensuality is constructed, a world of behaviors that are simultaneously idyllic and inhuman.
The Hare
The story centers on a man named Mario, who is searching for a hare that has escaped its cage. During his search, Mario enters a surreal and fantastical world, where he encounters strange characters and absurd situations.
The Musical Brain
A selection of texts written by Aira between 1996 and 2011, plus three previously unpublished autobiographical stories: "Duchamp in Mexico," "Taxol," and "The Joke." These twenty texts, somewhere between short story and imagined chronicle, reveal the unclassifiable genius of César Aira.
Varamo (which I have to read and will review later)
This novel takes place over a single night in Panama in 1923 and follows Varamo, a civil servant who accidentally becomes a poet without intending to. The novel is an exercise in absurdity in which Aira plays with the concept of artistic creation, in this case almost as an accident or an involuntary act.
The Marble
Lacking change, the cashier at a Chinese supermarket offers the protagonist of this novel a choice from a pile of trifles.
Artforum
Through short chapters spanning thirty years, the narrator recounts his obsessive and elusive relationship with the magazine Artforum.
Prins
A famous author, dedicated exclusively to writing Gothic novels, decides to abandon the craft for good. Frustrated and bitter at having allowed his youthful literary aspirations to be buried beneath the demands of the publishing market, he decides to radically change his life and surrender it to opium.
The Saint
During the Middle Ages, in a town on the Catalan coast, lives an elderly monk who has devoted the last forty years of his life to the scrupulous practice of his vocation, perceiving the world always from the perspective of prayer and detachment.