CESAR AIRA / Conversations

Cesar Aira
Conversations, 2007
Paperback, 96 pages 
19 x 14 cm
New Directions Publishing 

Daily conversations in outdoor cafés with cultured friends can help make reality a little more real. Unfortunately, however, during one such conversation, one man spots a gold Rolex watch on a TV soap opera’s goatherd. This seemingly small absurdity sets off alarms: strange sensations of deception, distress, and incipient madness. The two men’s uneasiness soon becomes a nightmare as the TV adventure advances with a real-life plot — involving a mutant strain of killer algae — to take over the world! Conversations, a reality within a fiction within a parallel reality, is hilariously funny and surprisingly touching.