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3.5 

The Conversations

By César Aira & Katherine Silver
The Conversations by César Aira & Katherine Silver digital book - Fable

Publisher Description

A cerebral and wildly funny story revolving around the incongruity of a gold Rolex watch spotted on a lowly goatherd’s wrist

Daily conversations in outdoor cafés 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.

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6 Reviews

3.5
“The end of the book (like the last 15 pages or so) is really good. Considering it's 88 pages long, I can't really say I recommend reading this book. The ending does tie all the confusion at the beginning together and does make a very fragmented dreamlike sequence somewhat more sensical. However, it is pretty tough to get to the good part unless you're spite-reading the book like I did (don't particularly recommend that course of action).”
“A master class in the art of expansion.”

About César Aira

CÉSAR AIRA was born in Coronel Pringles, Argentina in 1949, and has lived in Buenos Aires since 1967. He taught at the University of Buenos Aires (about Copi and Rimbaud) and at the University of Rosario (Constructivism and Mallarmé), and has translated and edited books from France, England, Italy, Brazil, Spain, Mexico, and Venezuela. Perhaps one of the most prolific writers in Argentina, and certainly one of the most talked about in Latin America, Aira has published more than 100 books to date in Argentina, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Chile, and Spain, which have been translated for France, Great Britain, Italy, Brazil, Portugal, Greece, Austria, Romania, Russia, and the United States. One novel, La prueba, has been made into a feature film, and How I Became a Nun was chosen as one of Argentina’s ten best books. Besides essays and novels Aira writes regularly for the Spanish newspaper El País. In addition to winning the 2021 Formentor Prize, he has received a Guggenheim scholarship, and was shortlisted for the Rómulo Gallegos prize and the Booker International Prize.

 

Katherine Silver

Katherine Silver's award-winning translations include works by María Sonia Cristoff, Daniel Sada, César Aira, Julio Cortázar, Juan Carlos Onetti, and Julio Ramón Ribeyro. The author of Echo Under Story, she volunteers as an interpreter for asylum seekers.

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