Synopses & Reviews
One Saturday night a bankrupt bachelor in his sixties and his mother dine with a wealthy friend. They discuss their endlessly connected neighbors. 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 windup 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 somehow, disturbingly reminiscent of the dinner party.
Review
"Aira will put knots in your brain." Ben Ratliff
Review
"Aira's works are like slim cabinets of wonder, full of unlikely juxtapositions. His unpredicatbility is masterful." The New York Times Book Review
Review
"Aira's output has been a steady tickle of irrefutable genius and deepening strangeness." Rivka Galchen Harper's
Synopsis
Was it a nightmare--the result of a bad case of indigestion--or did something truly scary happen after dinner in the Argentine town of Coronel Pringles?
About the Author
César Aira was born in Coronel Pringles, Argentina, in 1949. Wildly popular in Latin America, he has published more than seventy books of short fictions and essays.Katherine Silver is an award-winning literary translator and the co-director of the Banff International Literary Translation Centre (BILTC).