"Conceptualist absurdity meets magical-realist essay in the Argentine novelist's brief, dizzying, witty, love/hate letter to contemporary art, asking whether words can make sense of its spiralling craziness. An intellectual's stocking-filler, from Zwirner's charming, sleekly designed paperback "Ekphrasis" series."--Jackie Wullschlager "Financial Times"

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 and at the University of Rosario, and has translated and edited books from different languages. 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 120 books. Rights of his books have been sold to almost 30 countries. One novel, La prueba (1992), has been made into a feature film, and How I Became a Nun (1993) was chosen as one of Argentina's ten best books. Besides essays and novels Aira writes regularly for the Spanish newspaper El País. In 1996 he received a Guggenheim scholarship, in 2002 he was shortlisted for the Rómulo Gallegos prize, in 2015 he was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize, and in 2016 he was Guest of Honour at the International Literary Festival Berlin and was awarded the Premio Iberoamericano de Narrativa Manuel Rojas. Katherine Silver is an award-winning translator of Spanish and Latin American literature. Her most recent translations include works by Daniel Sada, César Aira, Horacio Castellanos Moya, Ernesto Mallo, and Carla Guelfenbein. She was formerly translator-in-residence at the University of Iowa and the co-director of the Banff International Literary Translation Centre (BILTC)