Sunday book pick: In ‘The Famous Magician’, Argentinian writer César Aira weighs literature in gold

“Magic, he said, was very limited, limited to itself: it was what it was and nothing more.”

Argentinian writer César Aira’s 2013 novella The Famous Magician begins with the musings of a writer who resembles Aira in many ways. “Past sixty and enjoying a certain renown”, the writer feels he has “already read too much” and there’s nothing new that he really wants to read. In addition to this, he has hit a writer’s block. But neither concerns him too much since he’s past the age to worry about money and in his semi-retirement stage has mercifully realised that he has saved up enough.

A Faustian dilemma

One morning, when he’s at a secondhand book market that he frequents, he meets Ovando, a “fat, scruffy man, somewhere in between forty and fifty” whom the narrator (César) considers the “residue of residue” of real booksellers. While he was predisposed to ignoring Ovando, something peculiar happens that morning which shifts César’s sense of reality.

Ovando suggests that he can “bend” the laws of physics. Taking it as ramblings of a madman, the narrator jokes with him and shows him the different ways that he can mess with the laws of physics. Putting an end to the banter, he transforms a cube of sugar into pure,...

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