César Aira is an Argentine writer and translator. He was born in Coronel Pringles, Argentina in 1949, and has lived in Buenos Aires since 1967. Perhaps one of the most prolific writers in Argentina, and certainly one of the most talked about in Latin America, Aira has practiced literary work in almost every field, as a translator, novelist, playwright, journalist, and essayist. He has lectured on Rimbaud, Mallarmé, and on constructivism at the University of Buenos Aires and at the University of Rosario. He has translated and edited books from France, England, Italy, Brazil, Spain, Mexico, and Venezuela. Aira writes one page a day, but so far, he has published a wide range of essays and nonfiction texts, three short story collections, including the celebrated The Musical Brain and other Stories (2015), and more than 60 novels. To mention a few: Ema the Captive (1981), Ghosts (1990), The Hare (1997), The Literary Conference (1997), The Miracle Cures of Dr. Aira (1998), An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter (2000), Varamo (2002), The Conversations (2007), and Shantytown (2013). His work has been translated into ten languages. His novel Proof (1992) has been made into a feature film, and How I Became a Nun (1993) was chosen as one of Argentina’s ten best books. Aira writes regularly for the Spanish newspaper El País. In 1996, he received a Guggenheim scholarship. He was shortlisted for the Rómulo Gallegos Prize in 2002, for the Neustadt International Prize in 2014, and for the Man Booker International Prize in 2015.
