The most unsettling and stunning of Aira's short novels published by New Directions.
"On a building site of a new, luxury apartment building, visitors looked up at the strange, irregular form of the water tank that crowned the edifice, and the big parabolic dish that would supply television images to all the floors. On the edge of the dish, a sharp metallic edge on which no bird would have dared to perch, three completely naked men were sitting, with their faces turned up to the midday sun; no one saw them, of course." ― from Ghosts
Ghosts is about a construction worker's family squatting on a building site. They all see large and handsome ghosts around their quarters, but the teenage daughter is the most curious. Her questions about them become more and more heartfelt until the story reaches a critical, chilling moment when the mother realizes that her daughter's life hangs in the balance.
"Wonderful... Ghosts is an incitement to the sensuality of thought, of wonder, of questioning, of anticipation."
― Thomas McGonigle, Los Angeles Times
"A languorous, surreal atmosphere of baking heat and quietly menacing shadows... puts one in mind of a painting by de Chirico."
― The New Yorker
"Once you’ve started reading Aira, you don’t want to stop."
― Roberto Bolano
"Utterly astonishing."
― San Francisco Chronicle
"Aira's literary significance, like that of many other science fiction writers, comes from how he pushes us to question the porous line between fact and fantasy, to see it not only as malleable in history, but also blurred in the everyday. The engrossing power of his work, though, comes from how he carries out these feats: with the inexhaustible energy and pleasure of a child chasing after imaginary enemies in the park."
― Los Angeles Review of Books
