We’re delighted to announce the launch of our newest book club, A Season Of, in which we’ll spend several splendid months reading and discussing books by a single author. This will be a friendly, informal, non-academic chat, and everyone is welcome to join us. Our first pick is the acclaimed Argentinian writer César Aira, and for our first meeting we’ll be talking about The Hare, translated from the Spanish by Nick Caistor.
This meeting will take place virtually via Zoom. If you’d like to join in the online chat, please email becky@malvernbooks.com with “season of aira” in the subject line. The book can be purchased via our online store here, or call us on 512-322-2097 to arrange curbside pick up.
Clarke is a nineteenth-century English naturalist who roams the pampas in search of an elusive animal: the Legibrerian hare, whose defining quality seems to be its ability to fly. The local tribesmen, pointing skyward, tell him about recent sightings of the hare, but then they ask Clarke to help them search for their missing chief, as well. On further investigation Clarke finds more than meets the eye: in the Mapuche and Voroga languages every word has at least two meanings.
Witty, very ironic, and with all the usual Airian digressive magic, The Hare offers subtle reflections on love, Victorian-era colonialism, and the many ambiguities of language.
César Aira was born in Coronel Pringles, Argentina in 1949, and has lived in Buenos Aires since 1967. He taught at the University of Buenos Aires (about Copi and Rimbaud) and at the University of Rosario (Constructivism and Mallarmé), and has translated and edited books from France, England, Italy, Brazil, Spain, Mexico, and Venezuela. Perhaps one of the most prolific writers in Argentina, and certainly one of the most talked about in Latin America, Aira has published more than eighty books to date in Argentina, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Chile, and Spain, which have been translated for France, Great Britain, Italy, Brazil, Portugal, Greece, Austria, Romania, Russia, and now the United States. One novel, La prueba, has been made into a feature film, and How I Became a Nun was chosen as one of Argentina’s ten best books. Besides essays and novels Aira writes regularly for the Spanish newspaper El País. In 1996 he received a Guggenheim scholarship, in 2002 he was short listed for the Rómulo Gallegos prize, and has been shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize.
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Join Zoom Meeting:
Meeting ID: 282 978 3950
Password: 788597
