Ghosts (New Directions Paperbook) - Softcover

Aira, César

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0811217426 ISBN 13: 9780811217422

Publisher: New Directions, 2009

Synopsis

The most unsettling and stunning of Aira's short novels published by New Directions.

"On a building site of a new, luxury apartment building, visitors looked up at the strange, irregular form of the water tank that crowned the edifice, and the big parabolic dish that would supply television images to all the floors. On the edge of the dish, a sharp metallic edge on which no bird would have dared to perch, three completely naked men were sitting, with their faces turned up to the midday sun; no one saw them, of course." ― from Ghosts

Ghosts is about a construction worker's family squatting on a building site. They all see large and handsome ghosts around their quarters, but the teenage daughter is the most curious. Her questions about them become more and more heartfelt until the story reaches a critical, chilling moment when the mother realizes that her daughter's life hangs in the balance.

About this title

About the Author:

Nominated for a Neustadt award and the Man Booker International Prize, César Aira was born in Coronel Pringles, Argentina, in 1949. He has published at least one hundred books and was most recently the creator of a limited edition, “Valise,” for the Museum of Modern Art, NYC. 

The poet Chris Andrews teaches at the University of Western Sydney, Australia, where he is a member of the Writing and Society Research Centre. He has translated books by Roberto Bolano and César Aira for New Directions. He has won the Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize for his poetry and the Valle-Inclan Prize for his translations.

Review:

“Wonderful... Ghosts is an incitement to the sensuality of thought, of wonder, of questioning, of anticipation.”
- Thomas McGonigle, Los Angeles Times

“A languorous, surreal atmosphere of baking heat and quietly menacing shadows... puts one in mind of a painting by de Chirico.”
- The New Yorker

“Once you’ve started reading Aira, you don’t want to stop.”
- Roberto Bolano

“Utterly astonishing.”
- San Francisco Chronicle

“Aira's literary significance, like that of many other science fiction writers, comes from how he pushes us to question the porous line between fact and fantasy, to see it not only as malleable in history, but also blurred in the everyday. The engrossing power of his work, though, comes from how he carries out these feats: with the inexhaustible energy and pleasure of a child chasing after imaginary enemies in the park.”
- Los Angeles Review of Books

“Ghosts has some serious bite, for such a little book. Within it Aira likens literature to a building that has never been built, to an architect's dream. And though he never comes out and says it, I get the sense that for him the reader is always a ghost, haunting the unbuilt and the imagined, flying through time to attend to the party on the page.”
- Emily Keeler, The Rumpus

About this edition

• Publisher: New Directions
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0811217426
• ISBN 13: 9780811217422
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 4
• Number of pages: 144