The Seamstress and the Wind
Published on 21. July 2016
Book
Paperback/Softback
120 pages
978-1-908276-84-1 (ISBN)
Description
In a small town in Argentina, a seamstress is sewing a wedding dress. All of a sudden she fears that her son has been kidnapped and driven off to Patagonia. She gives chase in a taxi. Her husband finds out and takes off after her - to the end of the world, to the place where monsters are born, and where the southern wind falls hopelessly in love.
Reviews / Votes
'Aira writes at full tilt, going where the words take him (a style he calls "constant flight forward") so that reading him is dizzying.' -- Jane Housham * The Guardian * 'Once you've started reading Aira, you don't want to stop.' -- Roberto Bolano 'Aira is firmly in the tradition of Jorge Luis Borges and W. G. Sebald.' -- Los Angeles Mark Doty Times * Los Angeles Times * 'I was quickly seduced by The Seamstress and the Wind, which takes place in Coronel Pringles, Argentina, Aira's hometown. It figures he'd come from a place called Pringles, where funny music resounds and nothing ever happens, except everything.' -- Patti SmithMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
High Wycombe
United Kingdom
Product notice
Paperback (UK-B)
Dimensions
Height: 198 mm
Width: 126 mm
Thickness: 17 mm
Weight
176 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-908276-84-1 (9781908276841)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Persons
Cesar Aira is a translator as well as the author of around 80 books of his own - so far. He declared that he might have become a painter if it weren't so difficult ("the paint, the brushes, having to clean it all"). He was born in Coronel Pringles, Argentina, and moved to Buenos Aires in 1967 at the age of eighteen and was, by his own admission, "a young militant leftist, with the notion of writing big realist novels." By 1972, after a brief spell in prison following a student demonstration, he was writing anything but.
His writing is considered to be among the most important and influential in Latin America today, and is marked by extreme eccentricity and innovation, as well as an aesthetic restlessness and a playful spirit. He is without a doubt the true heir to Jorge Luis Borges' literature of ideas. He has been called many things: "slippery" (The Nation), "too smart" (New York Sun), "infuriating" (New York Times Book Review) and a writer of "perplexing episodes" (New York Review of Books). He's also been called "one of the three or four best writers working in Spanish today" (Roberto Bolano) and the "most original, shocking, exciting and subversive Spanish-language author of our day" (Ignacio Echevarria). Patti Smith was "quickly seduced" when she read The Seamstress and the Wind, and admits that seeing him at a writer's conference: "I was so excited at his presence that I bounded his way like a St. Bernard".
His writing is considered to be among the most important and influential in Latin America today, and is marked by extreme eccentricity and innovation, as well as an aesthetic restlessness and a playful spirit. He is without a doubt the true heir to Jorge Luis Borges' literature of ideas. He has been called many things: "slippery" (The Nation), "too smart" (New York Sun), "infuriating" (New York Times Book Review) and a writer of "perplexing episodes" (New York Review of Books). He's also been called "one of the three or four best writers working in Spanish today" (Roberto Bolano) and the "most original, shocking, exciting and subversive Spanish-language author of our day" (Ignacio Echevarria). Patti Smith was "quickly seduced" when she read The Seamstress and the Wind, and admits that seeing him at a writer's conference: "I was so excited at his presence that I bounded his way like a St. Bernard".