Ema the Captive - Softcover

Aira, César

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0811219100 ISBN 13: 9780811219105

Publisher: New Directions, 2016

Synopsis

Ema The Captive, César Aira’s second novel, is perhaps closest in style to his popular An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter and The Hare

In nineteenth-century Argentina, Ema, a delicate woman of indeterminate origins, is captured by soldiers and taken, along with with her newborn babe, to live as a concubine in a crude fort on the very edges of civilization. The trip is appalling (deprivations and rapes prevail along the way), yet the real story commences once Ema arrives at the fort, where she takes on a succession of lovers among the soldiers and Indians, leading to a brave and grand entrepreneurial experiment. As is usual with Aira’s work, the wonder of the book is in the details of customs, beauty, and language, and the curious, perplexing reality of human nature.

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

“Cesar Aira's body of work is a perfect machine for invention.”
- Maria Moreno, BOMB

“Playing with recycled images, stretching tired tropes until they deform, Aira is fascinated by how defining and describing reality, however absurdly, can end up creating a new reality in that image.”
- Bookforum

“Aira's novel delivers a truly unique contribution to literature.”
- Diego Baez, Booklist

“In this magical little Frisbee of a novel by the prolific Argentine, a kidnapped woman seduces her captors in a fort at the edge of civilization, turning the tables on their power.”
- Boston Globe

“Uncanny imagination a la Calvino.”
- Laura Pearson, Chicago Tribune

“Aira's works are slim cabinets of wonder, full of unlikely juxtapositions. His unpredictability is masterful.”
- Rivka Galchen, Harper's

“An elegant, almost ethereal story of one woman's survival.”
- Kirkus

“This sidelong way of looking at Kafka is uniquely rewarding, eschewing the organizing and narrative principles of biography just as Kafka himself so often eschewed the organizing and narrative principles of fiction.”
- Morten Hoi Jensen, LA Review of Books

“His latest book to be translated, Ema the Captive, is not only one of his earliest books―it may be his finest. As such, it also works as a perfect introduction to the Aira universe. The world of Ema is lush and fantastic, but never overbearing; the reader is immersed in a landscape still teetering on the edge of innocence, awash with animals and scents almost impossible to imagine in our modern times. From body-painting to lantern-lit caves to the mating of manatees, the world that Ema―and the lucky reader―inhibit is wondrous and new, even if it’s the imagined past.”
- Mark Haber, Lithub

“Unsettling and elegant parables.”
- Los Angeles Times

About this edition

• Publisher: New Directions
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0811219100
• ISBN 13: 9780811219105
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 128