The Famous Magician [Hardcover]

A certain writer ( past sixty, enjoying 'a certain renown' ) strolls through the old book market in a Buenos Aires park: My Sunday walk through the market, repeated over so many years, was part of my general fantasizing about books. Unfortunately, he is suffering from writer's block. However, that proves to be the least of our hero's problems. In the market, he fails to avoid the insufferable boor Ovando a complete loser but a man supremely full of himself: Conceit was never less justified. And yet, is Ovando a master magician? Can he turn sugar cubes into pure gold? And can our protagonist decline the offer Ovando proposes granting him absolute power if the writer never in his life reads another book? And is his publisher also a great magician? And the writer's wife?A writer is offered a devils bargain: will he give up reading books in exchange for total world domination? Aira'sworks are like slim cabinets of wonder, full of unlikely juxtapositions. Hisunpredictability is masterful. Airas cubist eye sees fromevery angle. C?sar Aira is writing a gigantic, headlong, acrobatic fresco of modern life entirely made up of novelettes, novellas,? A writers future hangs in the balance when he is tempted by an unexpected Mephistopheles in Airas playful, self-reflexive latest...the storys driving question of choosing a meaningful course for ones life is timeless. Airas short books are the literary equivalent of a P?rigord black truffle  small, rich delicacies worth savoring and contemplating. Aira, the Argentine master of a certain strain of unabashedly self-reflexive novella that frequently marries the ingratiating confidence of fabulism with postmodern panache, has offered his audience a wicked little piece of literary wish-fulfillment gone happily awry.