Cesar Aira: Varamo

Right now a novel's length seems a neutral force. Over here, you have Haruki Murakami and Peter Nadas lying silent for years, then storming the shores of consciousness with thousand-page dreadnoughts; over there, the Argentine writer César Aira, pumping out books of one-tenth the size that can still put knots in your brain.

Since 1975 he has published more than 80 of them in Spanish, according to his publisher. "Varamo" is the seventh to be translated into English, and the sixth since 2006 by New Directions. It concerns an afternoon and evening in the life of a middle-aged civil-service flunky by that name. The setting is Colón, the Panamanian city by the Caribbean mouth of the canal; it's 1923, nine years after the canal's completion.

Read More