The Conversations

Description

Daily conversations in outdoor cafes 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! The Conversations, a reality within a fiction within a parallel reality, is hilariously funny and surprisingly touching.

Author description

Nominated for a Neustadt Award and shortlisted for the 2015 Man Booker International Prize, Cesar Aira was born in Coronel Pringles, Argentina, in 1949. He has published at least ninety books. Katherine Silver is an award-winning literary translator and the co-director of the Banff International Literary Translation Centre (BILTC).