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Festival & Game of the Worlds
Oddly twinned masterpieces by one of the greatest fabulists of any age: past, present, or 40,000 years in the future.
In Festival, the genius postmodern sci-fi filmmaker Alec Steryx is the star guest of a film festival in an unnamed country. But he’s brought a surprise: his nonagenarian mother. Everyone is baffled: Why? Half-blind and terminally cranky, she does nothing but complain, despite insisting on attending every screening and reception. As Steryx’s mother gums up the works for the festival organizers, larger problems are in store…. A delightfully baroque comedy of errors, Festival is, all at once, a loving parody of the institutions that support artists, a meditation on postmodern art, and a propulsive, lyrical, surreal adventure.
In the far, far, future, a middle-aged father has fallen behind the times. Bemused and disturbed, he watches his children play the eponymous Game of the Worlds, a Total Reality war game that involves the annihilation of countless alien civilizations―which are at least as real as the narrator’s own. As he debates the ethics of the game, struggles with his home’s “intelligent system,” and fumblingly manipulates his Discourse Corrector (a dead ringer for ChatGPT) on virtual beachside dates, an errant thought threatens to set a world-ending chain of logic into motion: the return of the Idea of God… Epic and domestic, madcap and musing by turns, this prescient novel reads like a message in a bottle from a bewitchingly strange yet all-too familiar future.
In Festival, the genius postmodern sci-fi filmmaker Alec Steryx is the star guest of a film festival in an unnamed country. But he’s brought a surprise: his nonagenarian mother. Everyone is baffled: Why? Half-blind and terminally cranky, she does nothing but complain, despite insisting on attending every screening and reception. As Steryx’s mother gums up the works for the festival organizers, larger problems are in store…. A delightfully baroque comedy of errors, Festival is, all at once, a loving parody of the institutions that support artists, a meditation on postmodern art, and a propulsive, lyrical, surreal adventure.
In the far, far, future, a middle-aged father has fallen behind the times. Bemused and disturbed, he watches his children play the eponymous Game of the Worlds, a Total Reality war game that involves the annihilation of countless alien civilizations―which are at least as real as the narrator’s own. As he debates the ethics of the game, struggles with his home’s “intelligent system,” and fumblingly manipulates his Discourse Corrector (a dead ringer for ChatGPT) on virtual beachside dates, an errant thought threatens to set a world-ending chain of logic into motion: the return of the Idea of God… Epic and domestic, madcap and musing by turns, this prescient novel reads like a message in a bottle from a bewitchingly strange yet all-too familiar future.
192 pages, Paperback
Published July 23, 2024
15 people are currently reading
263 people want to read
About the author
César Aira
263 books1,158 followersCésar 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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Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews
July 5, 2024
poetry's last trace of elegance was melancholy.the twentieth(!) book in english translation from césar aira, this one contains two novella-length works: festival (festival) and game of the worlds (el juego de los mundos). in the former, the argentine master offers a somewhat absurdist tale of a filmmaker attending a film fest in his honor... with his 90-something mother in tow. the latter is a futuristic story of a video game that destroys (actual) civilizations on other planets (wiping out all of its inhabitants). famous for his "flight forward" style of fiction writing, aira's books are all over the literary map in terms of themes, subjects, genres, and plots, yet each contains a very distinctive essence all his own. smart, reflective, and always playful (does one ever really know which direction an aira story might go, even midway through?), aira is a reliably entertaining writer and both festival and game of the worlds fit nicely within his impressively large — and ever-growing — body of work.
and the result has been that we've become a herd of fools, irredeemably full of ourselves.
*translated from the spanish by katherine silver (castellanos moya, pacheco, ribeyro, onetti, adán, giralt torrente, poniatowska, sada, bernal, et al.)
August 10, 2024
I argued many times for publishing the novels of authors such as Aira in pairs, so was delighted to see New Directions had decided to do this. I am a big fan of Aira and will read everything of his that is translated, but books of less than 100 pages are expensive.
Festival concerns an international film festival in an unnamed country, focused on its guest of honour, Belgian direction Alex Steryx, and the mundane chaos caused by the guest he brings, his elderly and frail mother. There are echoes of his wonderful The Literary Conference in the style this is presented, and that it is largely played for humour. Steryx is to chair the Grand Jury and to be present at the premier of his latest science fiction film.
Needless to say Steryx’s mother gets in the way as his priority has to be her needs, she is losing her sight, and has a continually bad temper. She immediately clashes with the Festival’s organiser, Perla Sobietsky, who is extremely competitive and author of a book of Steryx. They both demand his time.
The story of the days of the festival ticks over very pleasantly and is largely satirical until a rather tremendous punchline, or punch-paragraph. Aira signing off in typical fashion.
Though also dealing with science fiction, and being humorous, The Game of the Worlds is very different in its style and tone, but just as good, if not, a little better. Though it could be one of Steryx’s plots for a film.
The novel takes place in the undated far ahead future, and the ‘game’ is a virtual reality game played adolescent children of the narrator, who though knowledgeable of IT cannot understand the pull the game has. The game seems similar, though far more brutal, to the board game ‘Risk’, and involves (virtually) arriving on a planet, then taking it over by violent means, thereby committing genocide against the beings that inhabit it. As the novel proceeds, this worries the father, the narrator, more and more.
There is a horror element to the novel throughout, though this is Aira in a philosophical mood. The focus moves to the father’s additional concern that the ‘game’ may be priming humanity for the return of God, the notion of which died out many thousands of years before. The ‘game’ leads to some people becoming supreme, and that God might dispossess humanity.
The explanation of how God vanished for the world is a page of Aira at his very best; a blend of horror, humour, philosophy and fantasy.
Some great work is hard to finish though, and that is the case here. Whereas the finale to Festival is especially rewarding, here it falls a bit flat. The novel as a whole remains excellent, and it is the only disappointment in another wonderful piece of work from the great writer.
Festival concerns an international film festival in an unnamed country, focused on its guest of honour, Belgian direction Alex Steryx, and the mundane chaos caused by the guest he brings, his elderly and frail mother. There are echoes of his wonderful The Literary Conference in the style this is presented, and that it is largely played for humour. Steryx is to chair the Grand Jury and to be present at the premier of his latest science fiction film.
Needless to say Steryx’s mother gets in the way as his priority has to be her needs, she is losing her sight, and has a continually bad temper. She immediately clashes with the Festival’s organiser, Perla Sobietsky, who is extremely competitive and author of a book of Steryx. They both demand his time.
The story of the days of the festival ticks over very pleasantly and is largely satirical until a rather tremendous punchline, or punch-paragraph. Aira signing off in typical fashion.
Though also dealing with science fiction, and being humorous, The Game of the Worlds is very different in its style and tone, but just as good, if not, a little better. Though it could be one of Steryx’s plots for a film.
The novel takes place in the undated far ahead future, and the ‘game’ is a virtual reality game played adolescent children of the narrator, who though knowledgeable of IT cannot understand the pull the game has. The game seems similar, though far more brutal, to the board game ‘Risk’, and involves (virtually) arriving on a planet, then taking it over by violent means, thereby committing genocide against the beings that inhabit it. As the novel proceeds, this worries the father, the narrator, more and more.
There is a horror element to the novel throughout, though this is Aira in a philosophical mood. The focus moves to the father’s additional concern that the ‘game’ may be priming humanity for the return of God, the notion of which died out many thousands of years before. The ‘game’ leads to some people becoming supreme, and that God might dispossess humanity.
The explanation of how God vanished for the world is a page of Aira at his very best; a blend of horror, humour, philosophy and fantasy.
Some great work is hard to finish though, and that is the case here. Whereas the finale to Festival is especially rewarding, here it falls a bit flat. The novel as a whole remains excellent, and it is the only disappointment in another wonderful piece of work from the great writer.
September 19, 2024
The four stars are for the first story in this volume, "Festival." I think a lot of people can relate to the narrative. The second story, "Game of the Worlds," is not that interesting to me. The writing of course, is on a superb level.
December 23, 2025
Let’s go 4.5 for Festival and 3.5 for Game of the Worlds.
A super awesome pairing of novellas. It was fun to read some sci-fi, and Aira’s sci-fi is extremely unconventional in a way I loved. Festival is a ridiculous comedy which offers some fun satire on film culture, “high art,” and asks whether gamers deserve respect. Game of the Worlds is an insightful philosophical dialogue which presages our current AI crisis. Although I thought that the premise of GotW was much more interesting, I definitely found Festival on the whole more compelling and entertaining, certainly lending to Aira’s wit and humor throughout. Festival builds effortlessly and repetitiously upon itself, and Aira weaves so much comedy into his rich thematic explorations; it culminates in a final paragraph which is absurd and thematically rich, and it ties up the story so well. Game of the Worlds, on the other hand, takes a compelling premise and extrapolates it to its furthest ends. Aira foresees all the obvious questions that this concept might pose, and gets them out of the way with haste, opening the field for much more interesting Big Ideas. I love how precise Aira is, he can articulate feelings, themes, and ideas so deftly, and every page felt like a revelation and reevaluation of the previous. Equally, he has such a handle on the direction of his story— these narratives both unfold in ways that feel very natural, but never obvious or expected. As a pairing, I think they work super well and create some great intertextual resonances. Ultimately these are both stories about communication, discourse, dialogue, or what have you; about how people engage with people and ideas. So glad to have incidentally discovered this fantastic author, and hopefully there will be much more César Aira in my future.
A super awesome pairing of novellas. It was fun to read some sci-fi, and Aira’s sci-fi is extremely unconventional in a way I loved. Festival is a ridiculous comedy which offers some fun satire on film culture, “high art,” and asks whether gamers deserve respect. Game of the Worlds is an insightful philosophical dialogue which presages our current AI crisis. Although I thought that the premise of GotW was much more interesting, I definitely found Festival on the whole more compelling and entertaining, certainly lending to Aira’s wit and humor throughout. Festival builds effortlessly and repetitiously upon itself, and Aira weaves so much comedy into his rich thematic explorations; it culminates in a final paragraph which is absurd and thematically rich, and it ties up the story so well. Game of the Worlds, on the other hand, takes a compelling premise and extrapolates it to its furthest ends. Aira foresees all the obvious questions that this concept might pose, and gets them out of the way with haste, opening the field for much more interesting Big Ideas. I love how precise Aira is, he can articulate feelings, themes, and ideas so deftly, and every page felt like a revelation and reevaluation of the previous. Equally, he has such a handle on the direction of his story— these narratives both unfold in ways that feel very natural, but never obvious or expected. As a pairing, I think they work super well and create some great intertextual resonances. Ultimately these are both stories about communication, discourse, dialogue, or what have you; about how people engage with people and ideas. So glad to have incidentally discovered this fantastic author, and hopefully there will be much more César Aira in my future.
July 24, 2025
Both novellas were phenomenal in their own ways, but Game of the Worlds in particular was so well crafted. I feel lucky to have stumbled upon this. Aira has this talent for succinctly disseminating the most complex settings in his stories in such a way that a sentence is enough to completely reorient ourselves in a world that cannot possibly exist. He speaks a lot in Festival about this idea of a nostalgia for the present. I think this breakage and dissociation with our era is (by definition) alienating and also what relates all of us across time to one another. His ability to put words to it gives the reader both the melancholy of confirmation with this state of emergency, and the pleasure of being seen. In each story there’s a sort of comedy of errors, contrasted by a knowledge of death. His characters seem to live lives that are series of mild frustrations, dispersed with profound encounters with time, art, one another, etc. What is more honest?
July 28, 2024
"It was an artistic idea - and there was nothing strange about the fact that he'd taken it seriously, for he took art seriously. And artistic ideas, as he'd confirmed through experience, have a precarious life they are very fragile. Put into practice, they can be revealed as not as good as they seem when they are only ideas. Or rather, even if they turn out to be good and fertile, they wear thin and then vanish into the work they've given birth to, and soon they are replaced in the field of ideas by new ones, which always seem better. "
If you're going to do something, just do it. Even if you're a renowned filmmaker asked to attend a film festival a prestigious guest and jury member. Bring along your nonagenarian mother who slows things down and complains at every single opportunity. Don't accept the help that is offered to you to take care of her by those who want to get close to you and live through whatever challenges it brings about. And later, only later sit back and evaluate what good it served and if the idea was anywhere near as good as the reality. Then you can move on to the next thing whatever that is and create it based on a whim, impulse, or an idea, and build on that faith and trust in the creative process.
"Once the initial shock had passed and I could view our misunderstanding with more equanimity, I asked myself if we really disagreed at all. Perhaps the idea of God, which had done so much damage to ancient civilizations, was one of those ideas with double meanings, like rent, which can mean both that the owner rents a property to a tenant and that the tenant rents it from the owner."
In the distant future, it may be perfectly standard to have discussions with your adolescent children about their daily exploits destroying worlds that exist in far-off locations in the universe. The singularity will have come and totally rid our society of God, love and even the pleasure of reading. If this sounds horrific, I would wholeheartedly agree with you. Yet, Aira applies astute levity to the subject matter of war, AI and God. Mixed along with some laughs, the picture painted in Game of the Worlds is definitely a doom-filled disaster of potential outcomes of our present decisions.
Whether sifting through the world of post-modern art and films, the relationships between mother and son, or father and children, the heaviness of technology in a Matrix-like future, the glamorization and idolization of artists, this first introduction to César Aira's work was a welcomed literary adventure. No matter the subject of his other novellas, I am very interested in reading more of his work and ideas of the world. These novellas will not be the last I read of Aira. That, I can promise you.
In Game of the Worlds, Aira refuses to shy away from the heavy topics of our times such as the over-saturation of technology, parents' relationships with their adolescent children, modern war, God, space travel and alien civilizations. Aira doesn't directly insinuate that we live in a simulation, though some ideas were very Matrix-like. The narrator is a middle-aged father in the distant future, grappling with understanding the times, his children and essence and need for God in the world. This story took a while to pick for me, and eventually got going and in the end, I was very pleased to have read this second novella on a rainy afternoon at the cottage.
As an introduction to César Aira, I was very pleased with the two novellas Festival & Game of the Worlds. Festival tells the story of Alec Steryx attending a film festival as a prestigious guest and Steryx has decided to bring along his nonagenarian mother for the week of events. The novella is a subtle and astute satire discussing the nature of art institutions, glamorization and idolization of artists, mother-son relationships, and the nature of art in a post-modern world. Whether Aira was creating an entertaining plot twist or lyrically exploring relationships in our modern world, Festival was a dense, and literary adventure.
If you're going to do something, just do it. Even if you're a renowned filmmaker asked to attend a film festival a prestigious guest and jury member. Bring along your nonagenarian mother who slows things down and complains at every single opportunity. Don't accept the help that is offered to you to take care of her by those who want to get close to you and live through whatever challenges it brings about. And later, only later sit back and evaluate what good it served and if the idea was anywhere near as good as the reality. Then you can move on to the next thing whatever that is and create it based on a whim, impulse, or an idea, and build on that faith and trust in the creative process.
"Once the initial shock had passed and I could view our misunderstanding with more equanimity, I asked myself if we really disagreed at all. Perhaps the idea of God, which had done so much damage to ancient civilizations, was one of those ideas with double meanings, like rent, which can mean both that the owner rents a property to a tenant and that the tenant rents it from the owner."
In the distant future, it may be perfectly standard to have discussions with your adolescent children about their daily exploits destroying worlds that exist in far-off locations in the universe. The singularity will have come and totally rid our society of God, love and even the pleasure of reading. If this sounds horrific, I would wholeheartedly agree with you. Yet, Aira applies astute levity to the subject matter of war, AI and God. Mixed along with some laughs, the picture painted in Game of the Worlds is definitely a doom-filled disaster of potential outcomes of our present decisions.
Whether sifting through the world of post-modern art and films, the relationships between mother and son, or father and children, the heaviness of technology in a Matrix-like future, the glamorization and idolization of artists, this first introduction to César Aira's work was a welcomed literary adventure. No matter the subject of his other novellas, I am very interested in reading more of his work and ideas of the world. These novellas will not be the last I read of Aira. That, I can promise you.
In Game of the Worlds, Aira refuses to shy away from the heavy topics of our times such as the over-saturation of technology, parents' relationships with their adolescent children, modern war, God, space travel and alien civilizations. Aira doesn't directly insinuate that we live in a simulation, though some ideas were very Matrix-like. The narrator is a middle-aged father in the distant future, grappling with understanding the times, his children and essence and need for God in the world. This story took a while to pick for me, and eventually got going and in the end, I was very pleased to have read this second novella on a rainy afternoon at the cottage.
As an introduction to César Aira, I was very pleased with the two novellas Festival & Game of the Worlds. Festival tells the story of Alec Steryx attending a film festival as a prestigious guest and Steryx has decided to bring along his nonagenarian mother for the week of events. The novella is a subtle and astute satire discussing the nature of art institutions, glamorization and idolization of artists, mother-son relationships, and the nature of art in a post-modern world. Whether Aira was creating an entertaining plot twist or lyrically exploring relationships in our modern world, Festival was a dense, and literary adventure.
September 12, 2024
I only read "Game of the Words: a Science Fiction Book", skipping "Festival". This isn't SF like I like it. A potentially interesting idea about kids playing a video game that involves destroying real alien worlds and the father who finds that disturbing, but not told in a way that interested me. (The alien worlds being destroyed are as real as the world of the story. However, it seems possible that all the characters are actually living in a virtual world.)
August 18, 2024
Kind of mid, kind of lit. Positive ambivalence. A breakdown of taste, intergenerational relationships, sci-fi's (il)legitimacy. Funny but not funny, as in it's laughless yet clever.
September 13, 2025
I picked this up randomly from the library because it was a) short; b) translated into English; and c) on the science fiction shelf. I’d never heard of Aira before and hadn’t realized he was so prolific. His writing style felt immediately distinct—and, after reading a bit more about him after, the “flight forward” technique he uses made total sense; these stories almost felt like a creative writing exercise where you never quite knew what would happen next, but you knew it would make sense. I struggled a bit with “Festival” for reason I can’t quite pin down. It may have been the sleep deprivation I was experiencing on the train or my personal apathy toward film, but I couldn’t connect with it. Parts were interesting and the ending was mildly humorous, yet somehow it still felt like the story was just inching around being interesting. “Game of the Worlds” was something I enjoyed much more. The stories are very different but were paired together perfectly in this collection. “Festival” is about a science fiction filmmaker and “Game of the Worlds” feels like it could be one of Steryx’s films. The story itself is written in a similar style to the former but in a way that felt so much more compelling. The ethical dilemmas about God and parenting and the very real impact of the game the children play intersected in a fascinating way. Again, I can’t pin down why I do like this one when the first book didn’t work for me, but there was just something so earnest and topical both in the way it was written and the subject matter. The world depicted felt like looking at modern times through a trick mirror. I’m interested in reading more by Aira because this was a pleasant surprise from a random library check out.
Read
February 4, 2025I had a thread about Game of the Worlds on Bluesky in my daily recommendations series, I thought it was both a cool read and eerily prescient:
https://bsky.app/profile/bogiperson.b...
The other novella in this book, Festival, didn't win me over though. With all the wit about a film festival and the types of people who turn up at one (I thought that was really relatable and charming), and the entertaining fun meta aspects, ultimately it was yet another story of "look how inconvenient it is to have a disabled relative, look!". There's just so many of these stories.
_____
Source of the book: Bought with my own money (at the Raven Bookstore!)
https://bsky.app/profile/bogiperson.b...
The other novella in this book, Festival, didn't win me over though. With all the wit about a film festival and the types of people who turn up at one (I thought that was really relatable and charming), and the entertaining fun meta aspects, ultimately it was yet another story of "look how inconvenient it is to have a disabled relative, look!". There's just so many of these stories.
_____
Source of the book: Bought with my own money (at the Raven Bookstore!)
Read
January 26, 2025Cesar aira is a fun guy. I loved the sincerity of the cinephiles and the hilarious but poignant miscommunications they were caught in. And I loved how he committed to the sublime - presence, the passage about mountains - on top of the absurdity of the premise and details (the atlas was so strange as a plot point). I’ll read game of the worlds later
July 21, 2025
Classic Aira. Madman. I think the second one is a tribute to Philip K Dick.
August 31, 2025
5/5 for Festival, which really delivered on the premise. 3/5 for Game of the Worlds. It started strong and fascinating and sort of petered out into intellectual jargony moments.
December 17, 2024
Festival was a snooze. No real dialogue and lots of repeating thoughts led to a meandering and mostly underwhelming conclusion. Some interesting thoughts on film/cultural criticism, but won't go back to this story. Game of the Worlds was classic Cesar Aira. Fun, a little goofy, exciting, and insightful. Neither were close to his best work, but happy to have a new translation.
January 30, 2025
hello, my 2 Goodreads followers,
my first read of 2025 -- weird choice on my part?
Festival moved at the pace of Steryx's mother (and in some ways felt equally as vexing), but I suppose, me being an insufferable film student and all, that I was gratified in some way . . . (gratified? validated? mollified? I can't remember the exact word I was looking for ...)
Game of the Worlds felt an all-too-real possibility considering the world we live in now on several counts, including
1) Could our Artificial Intelligence grow to play a similar role in our lives as the "Intelligent System" in the story? Will our lives become so atomized and hyper-individualized and sectioned off and, well, lifeless?
and
2) How everything is just about genocide and conquest for the fun of it ! It's just a game! The narrator says, referencing his children, "One of my key objections was about what's called *fair play*. Weren't they playing with too much of an advantage? Weren't their activities shockingly similar to genocide? They adamantly denied this. In war, everything's allowed so all's fair, even the dirtiest tricks."
I feel like Aira had a chance to really say something Game of the Worlds, like it could have built up to something important, cutting, incisive -- but instead the takeaway was more like, "nothing matters, who cares, everything is empty of meaning anyways." Buddhist dispassion or nihilist cynicism? I felt more of the latter, and I didn't particularly like it. Like, I don't think we should just resign ourselves to genocide and conquest, yanno. Not that Aira is advocating that, I think there is *some* critique embedded in this piece . . . but whatever the punchline was, the joke didn't land for me.
Points for quality of language, ideas, inventiveness, creativity, humor, style and self-referentiality/mise-en-abyme. One of those totally infinite concentric circles reads. This was so f***ing meta, and I gotta hand it to Aira for being able to execute his mindf***s with finesse.
And yet, nothing moved me, nothing really clicked. Maybe the clever devices got old. The book was kinda fun and silly vibes, but for a qualitatively "light" or "fun" read, it took so much effort. Bleh.
my first read of 2025 -- weird choice on my part?
Festival moved at the pace of Steryx's mother (and in some ways felt equally as vexing), but I suppose, me being an insufferable film student and all, that I was gratified in some way . . . (gratified? validated? mollified? I can't remember the exact word I was looking for ...)
Game of the Worlds felt an all-too-real possibility considering the world we live in now on several counts, including
1) Could our Artificial Intelligence grow to play a similar role in our lives as the "Intelligent System" in the story? Will our lives become so atomized and hyper-individualized and sectioned off and, well, lifeless?
and
2) How everything is just about genocide and conquest for the fun of it ! It's just a game! The narrator says, referencing his children, "One of my key objections was about what's called *fair play*. Weren't they playing with too much of an advantage? Weren't their activities shockingly similar to genocide? They adamantly denied this. In war, everything's allowed so all's fair, even the dirtiest tricks."
I feel like Aira had a chance to really say something Game of the Worlds, like it could have built up to something important, cutting, incisive -- but instead the takeaway was more like, "nothing matters, who cares, everything is empty of meaning anyways." Buddhist dispassion or nihilist cynicism? I felt more of the latter, and I didn't particularly like it. Like, I don't think we should just resign ourselves to genocide and conquest, yanno. Not that Aira is advocating that, I think there is *some* critique embedded in this piece . . . but whatever the punchline was, the joke didn't land for me.
Points for quality of language, ideas, inventiveness, creativity, humor, style and self-referentiality/mise-en-abyme. One of those totally infinite concentric circles reads. This was so f***ing meta, and I gotta hand it to Aira for being able to execute his mindf***s with finesse.
And yet, nothing moved me, nothing really clicked. Maybe the clever devices got old. The book was kinda fun and silly vibes, but for a qualitatively "light" or "fun" read, it took so much effort. Bleh.
January 6, 2025
FESTIVAL (5 stars)
The first novella in this slim little two-for-one volume is a delight. Aira makes brilliant and comical use of his setup (famous director nearing end of his career gets invited to a film festival and decides to bring his elderly mother as his one comped guest; she’s miserable, stubborn, and has trouble getting around). All manner of expectation and interactions are turned on their heads due to the domineering presence of the mere presence of the director’s unbearable mother, who sucks the air out of every room and demands full attention, in addition to literally slowing everything down. Her refusal to miss any aspect of the events allows turns this into a comedy Aira utilizes to explore and satirize art, culture, fame, fandom, and film as organizers attempt to accommodate, exploit, and simply understand the mother-son package.
GAME OF THE WORLDS (3.5 stars)
Science fiction novella set in the future focussed on a father waxing philosophical as her dotes on and tries to relate to his children. The children all participate in a type of video game called "Game of the Worlds" where they invade and conquer/destroy other planets--the catch/twist is that it's not simply a game: virtual versions of players actually go to war on real planets and destroy them. All of this is aided by an intelligent computer system that regulates much of human life. It's a really fascinating concept and Aira develops/unfolds it in a rather gripping way. I started off enthralled with this story, but it sort of got too philosophical in a way that lost the energy and momentum created by the characters and the story.
Aira is a writer I was completely unfamiliar with and I grabbed this one impulsively while at the library one day. Kudos to New Directions for publishing this one and for Katherine Silver's wonderful translation.
The first novella in this slim little two-for-one volume is a delight. Aira makes brilliant and comical use of his setup (famous director nearing end of his career gets invited to a film festival and decides to bring his elderly mother as his one comped guest; she’s miserable, stubborn, and has trouble getting around). All manner of expectation and interactions are turned on their heads due to the domineering presence of the mere presence of the director’s unbearable mother, who sucks the air out of every room and demands full attention, in addition to literally slowing everything down. Her refusal to miss any aspect of the events allows turns this into a comedy Aira utilizes to explore and satirize art, culture, fame, fandom, and film as organizers attempt to accommodate, exploit, and simply understand the mother-son package.
GAME OF THE WORLDS (3.5 stars)
Science fiction novella set in the future focussed on a father waxing philosophical as her dotes on and tries to relate to his children. The children all participate in a type of video game called "Game of the Worlds" where they invade and conquer/destroy other planets--the catch/twist is that it's not simply a game: virtual versions of players actually go to war on real planets and destroy them. All of this is aided by an intelligent computer system that regulates much of human life. It's a really fascinating concept and Aira develops/unfolds it in a rather gripping way. I started off enthralled with this story, but it sort of got too philosophical in a way that lost the energy and momentum created by the characters and the story.
Aira is a writer I was completely unfamiliar with and I grabbed this one impulsively while at the library one day. Kudos to New Directions for publishing this one and for Katherine Silver's wonderful translation.
July 23, 2024
Festival
I like the premise but the story really drags. It could’ve made for a fantastic fifty page short story.
Game of the Worlds
At first this one was less interesting to me, but it did win me over by the end. Although I got lost at one point in what was happening, which didn’t happen with Festival, all in all I think I liked this second novella a bit better. It was shorter and it’s paced better with chapter breaks the former doesn’t have.
On a sentence to sentence basis, Aira might be one of the best living authors, but I do find the stories he tells tend to meander quite often. I obviously haven’t read everything he’s written but I feel like I’d probably prefer his short stories to his novellas.
I like the premise but the story really drags. It could’ve made for a fantastic fifty page short story.
Game of the Worlds
At first this one was less interesting to me, but it did win me over by the end. Although I got lost at one point in what was happening, which didn’t happen with Festival, all in all I think I liked this second novella a bit better. It was shorter and it’s paced better with chapter breaks the former doesn’t have.
On a sentence to sentence basis, Aira might be one of the best living authors, but I do find the stories he tells tend to meander quite often. I obviously haven’t read everything he’s written but I feel like I’d probably prefer his short stories to his novellas.
October 3, 2024
glad i gave this one a chance, as i really bounced off the last one i read from him. these two stories are great
its hard to talk about this dude's stories with much detail or analysis, least for me, because i love their arbitrary nature, how things are simply ambling along, sort of like a joke. each story lays out a simple problem, drills down into it a while, then pops away with a sort of punchline, usually a sort of synthesis of contradictions come before, never quite what you'd expect. and in the same way that revealing the punchline might ruin the joke of the whole thing, revealing those steps drilled down to the punchline might also, as they're so digressive, out of the way, not what you'd expect. so all i can say here is this book is good. hahahaha, i love it so
its hard to talk about this dude's stories with much detail or analysis, least for me, because i love their arbitrary nature, how things are simply ambling along, sort of like a joke. each story lays out a simple problem, drills down into it a while, then pops away with a sort of punchline, usually a sort of synthesis of contradictions come before, never quite what you'd expect. and in the same way that revealing the punchline might ruin the joke of the whole thing, revealing those steps drilled down to the punchline might also, as they're so digressive, out of the way, not what you'd expect. so all i can say here is this book is good. hahahaha, i love it so
March 5, 2025
I generally love Aira's short books, but unfortunately this one only halfway worked for me. It's comprised of two novellas. The first, "Festival", was an enjoyable farce about a film festival and its guest of honor, who inexplicably brings his aged, infirm, and confused mother along, causing endless heartache for the organizers; and, indeed, himself. Aira creates one absurd situation after another, but I found myself enjoying the asides about film and the director's odd science-fiction movies the most. In the end, it was overlong and would, I think, have been more effective at about 2/3 the length. "Game of the Worlds" had a fascinating concept but after a certain ways I unfortunately found it uninteresting as the narrator droned on.
May 17, 2025
3.5.
“My docile and tolerant nature is the compulsory flip side of formidable megalomania.”
Nice and solid. A satire and a sci-fi (that might also be satire), each better than my previous Aira excursion, “Ghosts.” Especially refreshing after the last two doe-eyed odes to the power and profundity of writing (“Brotherhood” and “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow”) to read an author willing to recognize authors as idiot catalysts of the apocalypse. Might need to study “Game of the Worlds” a bit longer before I develop a full opinion, given there are so many ways one can interpret everything within. Interpretation as a constant variable through both works — consequential and absurd.
“My docile and tolerant nature is the compulsory flip side of formidable megalomania.”
Nice and solid. A satire and a sci-fi (that might also be satire), each better than my previous Aira excursion, “Ghosts.” Especially refreshing after the last two doe-eyed odes to the power and profundity of writing (“Brotherhood” and “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow”) to read an author willing to recognize authors as idiot catalysts of the apocalypse. Might need to study “Game of the Worlds” a bit longer before I develop a full opinion, given there are so many ways one can interpret everything within. Interpretation as a constant variable through both works — consequential and absurd.
September 20, 2024
Enjoyed both of these independently but found the pairing somewhat incongruous, there was no real thematic link aside from "two novellas from Cesar Aira that hadn't yet been translated and published in English". Maybe if there were one or two more stories it could have come off as more of an anthology, with only two I kind of expected some kind of link and was disappointed that there really wasn't one, which maybe overshadowed my enjoyment somewhat. I guess it does make sense since publishing a 70 page novella and charging $10+ on it would probably be risky.
October 10, 2024
Aira's prose is excellent as usual, and this is certainly the most approachable of his I've read so I'd recommend it. I enjoyed the juxtaposition of Festival, about parents, with Game of Worlds, about parenting, but outside that tenuous connection they're very different. The former is grounded and humorous, while the latter is more exploratory and odd. I enjoyed the former more as a story, but the latter had some nice ruminations on parenting in between it's oddness that did connect for me.
February 2, 2025
The translator or Aira himself quite likes using the word “Interlocutor” and French sayings. And exploring verisimilitude, the appearance of reality. It was a lot for my brain haha. Especially Game of Worlds, an existential conundrum of the far off future made to feel like a not-so distant future… ya it was so intellectual that it read like pseudo-intellectualism simply because I couldn’t understand it haha
February 17, 2025
Another Aira masterclass. I could understand the inside baseball of his novels like Festival or The Literary Conference being too insular for some readers, but satirizing the globalized infrastructure of public funding bureaucracy that holds up the art world(s) on bowing and bending rafters is a hit with me. Interesting through-line with the concept of fair play that crosses the seam of these two works.
September 9, 2024
perfect
December 30, 2024
“My imagination helps; maybe intolerance is nothing more than a lack of imagination.” - César Aira, page 123
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 28, 2025
Festival is a strong 4. Never really got into Game of the Worlds.
May 5, 2025
“Festival” sort of fun; “Game of the Worlds” lost me.
October 2, 2025
Was a perfect read for during TIFF
August 10, 2024
Featival-***
Game of the Worlds-**
Game of the Worlds-**
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