Birthday
César Aira
(Author)
Chris Andrews
(Translator)
Description
Before you know it you are no longer young, and by the way, while you were thinking about other things, the world was changing--and then, just as suddenly you realize that you are fifty years old. Aira had anticipated his fiftieth--a time when he would not so much recall years past as look forward to what lies ahead--but the birthday came and went without much ado. It was only months later, while having a somewhat banal conversation with his wife about the phases of the moon, that he realized how little he really knows about his life. In Birthday Aira searches for the events that were significant to him during his first fifty years. Between anecdotes, and memories, the author ponders the origins of his personal truths, and meditates on literature meant as much for the writer as for the reader, on ignorance, knowledge, and death. Finally, Birthday is a little sad, in a serene, crystal-clear kind of way, which makes it even more irresistible.Product Details
Price
$13.95
Publisher
New Directions Publishing Corporation
Publish Date
February 26, 2019
Pages
88
Dimensions
4.9 X 6.8 X 0.5 inches | 0.2 pounds
Language
English
Type
Paperback
EAN/UPC
9780811219099
BISAC Categories:
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About the Author
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.
Chris Andrews was born in Newcastle, Australia, in 1962. He studied at the University of Melbourne and taught there, in the French program, from 1995 to 2008. He also taught at the University of Western Sydney, where he was a member of the Writing and Society Research Center. As well as translating nine books by Roberto Bolano and ten books (and counting) by César Aira, he also brought the French author Kaouther Adimi's Our Riches into English for New Directions. Andrews has won the Valle-Inclán Prize and the French-American Foundation Translation Prize for his translations. Additionally, he has published the critical studies Poetry and Cosmogony: Science in the Writing of Queneau and Ponge and Roberto Bolano's Fiction: An Expanding Universe as well as two collections of poems, Cut Lunch and Lime Green Chair, for which he won the Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize.
Reviews
For those of his fans who cannot read his work in Spanish, the arrival of each new title is bittersweet. We want more, and we want it yesterday.--Patrick Flanery
Among the international brotherhood of readers, César Aira is not just one of today's most remarkable Argentinian writers, he is also one of the most original, most shocking, most intelligent and amusing storytellers in Spanish today.--Ignacio Echevarría
[F]everishly pleasurable and smirkingly funny...-- (03/11/2019)
It's a slim but thoughtful affair, punctuated by numerous bons mots, acidic self-deprecation, and cutting observations about the world around him...rife with keen observations about passers-by, notes about the author's unique style and why it changed over time, and ruminations on how the author has dealt with the inscrutable eventualities of aging.-- (11/26/2018)
The ostensible simplicity of the volume carries powerful and incisive ideas about life and aging.
Triggered by the Argentine author's 50th birthday, this is his meditation, in a series of short chapters, on the events that made up his half century of life.
The book begins with an anecdote about a conversation the author had with his wife, in which it's revealed that he doesn't understand what causes the phases of the moon. This revelation of ignorance quickly cascades into a series of reflections on not-knowing, and on the reciprocal relationship between the swiftness of time, which ensures that we can't know everything, and our discontinuous experience of time, which make knowledge feel as disjointed as memory.--Steven Zultanski
Among the international brotherhood of readers, César Aira is not just one of today's most remarkable Argentinian writers, he is also one of the most original, most shocking, most intelligent and amusing storytellers in Spanish today.--Ignacio Echevarría
[F]everishly pleasurable and smirkingly funny...-- (03/11/2019)
It's a slim but thoughtful affair, punctuated by numerous bons mots, acidic self-deprecation, and cutting observations about the world around him...rife with keen observations about passers-by, notes about the author's unique style and why it changed over time, and ruminations on how the author has dealt with the inscrutable eventualities of aging.-- (11/26/2018)
The ostensible simplicity of the volume carries powerful and incisive ideas about life and aging.
Triggered by the Argentine author's 50th birthday, this is his meditation, in a series of short chapters, on the events that made up his half century of life.
The book begins with an anecdote about a conversation the author had with his wife, in which it's revealed that he doesn't understand what causes the phases of the moon. This revelation of ignorance quickly cascades into a series of reflections on not-knowing, and on the reciprocal relationship between the swiftness of time, which ensures that we can't know everything, and our discontinuous experience of time, which make knowledge feel as disjointed as memory.--Steven Zultanski
