"Aira's works are like slim cabinets of wonder, full of unlikely juxtapositions. His unpredictability is masterful."

Rivka Galchen - Harpers

"Aira’s cubist eye sees from every angle."

Patti Smith - New York Times Book Review

"César Aira is writing a gigantic, headlong, acrobatic fresco of modern life entirely made up of novelettes, novellas, novelitas. In other words, he is a great literary trickster, and also one of the most charming."

Adam Thirlwell

"A writer’s future hangs in the balance when he is tempted by an “unexpected Mephistopheles” in Aira’s playful, self-reflexive latest...the story’s driving question of choosing a meaningful course for one’s life is timeless."

Publishers Weekly

"Aira’s short books are the literary equivalent of a Périgord black truffle — small, rich delicacies worth savoring and contemplating."

Polygon

"Aira, the Argentine master of a certain strain of unabashedly self-reflexive novella that frequently marries the ingratiating confidence of fabulism with postmodern panache, has offered his audience a wicked little piece of literary wish-fulfillment gone happily awry."

Roberto Ontiveros - Texas Observer

"The Famous Magician by Cesar Aira, translated by Chris Andrews, is my favourite of the new books. Aira is the ludicrously prolific Argentinian author of over a hundred short books that invariably come apart while somehow keeping their shape. Rules are established before being merrily violated, ho-hum personal accounts become far-fetched zombie stories, serious literary rumination gives way to comic book pastiche. The method appears to have been working: the results have been books that don’t read like the ones you encounter in life but the kind you might pick up in dreams."

J.W. McCormack - The New Left Review