César Aira’s novel “The Hare”: Fantasy, but really radical.

César Aira claims to have read Kafka all his life. You immediately believe the Argentine Nobel Prize candidate when you read his books. As in Kafka’s texts, in Aira’s work one monstrosity follows the next, while everyday life takes place in between. At any time the real can tip into the fantastic; normality always returns to the most surreal situations, which is the most surprising thing in this constellation. If the reader believes that he has arrived in the world of a realistic novel, with Aira he will at some point be catapulted into the absurd and bizarre in an unpredictable way. In short: reading Aira is an adventure.