Birthday

Reviews

"The book begins with an anecdote about a conversation the author had with his wife, in which it’s revealed that he doesn’t understand what causes the phases of the moon. This revelation of ignorance quickly cascades into a series of reflections on not-knowing, and on the reciprocal relationship between the swiftness of time, which ensures that we can’t know everything, and our discontinuous experience of time, which make knowledge feel as disjointed as memory." — Steven Zultanski, Frieze

"[F]everishly pleasurable and smirkingly funny..." — Hyperallergic

"It's a slim but thoughtful affair, punctuated by numerous bons mots, acidic self-deprecation, and cutting observations about the world around him...rife with keen observations about passers-by, notes about the author’s unique style and why it changed over time, and ruminations on how the author has dealt with the inscrutable eventualities of aging." — Kirkus

"The ostensible simplicity of the volume carries powerful and incisive ideas about life and aging." — Publisher's Weekly

"Triggered by the Argentine author’s 50th birthday, this is his meditation, in a series of short chapters, on the events that made up his half century of life." — The New York Times

"For those of his fans who cannot read his work in Spanish, the arrival of each new title is bittersweet. We want more, and we want it yesterday." — Patrick Flanery, The Spectator

"Among the international brotherhood of readers, César Aira is not just one of today’s most remarkable Argentinian writers, he is also one of the most original, most shocking, most intelligent and amusing storytellers in Spanish today." — Ignacio Echevarría, El País