A certain writer (past sixty enjoying 'a certain renown') strolls through the old book market
in a Buenos Aires park: My Sunday walk through the market repeated over so many years was
part of my general fantasizing about books. Unfortunately he is suffering from writer's block.
However that proves to be the least of our hero's problems. In the market he fails to avoid
the insufferable boor Ovando-a complete loser but a man supremely full of himself: Conceit was
never less justified. And yet is Ovando a master magician? Can he turn sugar cubes into pure
gold? And can our protagonist decline the offer Ovando proposes granting him absolute power if
the writer never in his life reads another book? And is his publisher also a great magician?
And the writer's wife? Only César Aira could have cooked up this witch's potion (and only he
would plop in phantom Mont Blanc pens as well as fearsome crocodiles from the banks of the
Nile)-a brew bubbling over with the question: where does literature end and magic begin?
