The Proof - Tapa blanda

'Hail Cesar!' Patti Smith ---------- 'Bewitching and bewildering ... Compulsively readable ... Aira's writing - with its equal measures of rich complications and airy whimsies - combines brevity with so many possible meanings.' Arifa Akbar, Financial Times ---------- 'Aira writes at full tilt, going where the words take him (a style he calls "constant flight forward") so that reading him is dizzying.' Jane Housham, The Guardian ---------- 'Aira is firmly in the tradition of Jorge Luis Borges and W. G. Sebald.' Mark Doty, Los Angeles Times ---------- 'Aira is one of the most provocative and idiosyncratic novelists working in Spanish today, and should not be missed.' New York Times Book Review ---------- 'Along with a daring sense of fun, Aira has a playful imagination and the ability to spin a yarn as intricate as a spider's web.' Eileen Battersby, Irish Times ---------- 'If there is one contemporary writer who defies classification, it is Cesar Aira. His novels seem to put the theories of Gombrowicz into practice, except, and the difference is fundamental, that Gombrowicz was the abbot of a luxurious imaginary monastery, while Aira is a nun or novice among the Discalced Carmelites of the Word. Sometimes he is reminiscent of Roussel (Roussel on his knees in a bath red with blood), but the only living writer to whom he can be compared is Barcelona's Enrique Vila-Matas.' Roberto Bolano ---------- 'Cesar Aira is writing a gigantic, headlong, acrobatic fresco of modern life entirely made up of novelettes, novellas, novelitas... In other words, he is a great literary trickster, and also one of the most charming.' Adam Thirlwell ---------- 'Aira's works are like slim cabinets of wonder, full of unlikely juxtapositions. His unpredictability is masterful.' Rivka Galchen

Marcia is sixteen, overweight and unhappy. One day, as she's walking down a Buenos Aires street, she hears a shout: 'Wannafuck?' Startled, she turns round and is confronted by two punk girls Lenin and Mao. Soon, she's beguiled by them and the possibilities they open up. But the two have little time for a philosophical discussion of love: they need proof, and with their own savage logic the duo, calling themselves the Commando of Love, hold up a supermarket as the novel climaxes in an unforgettable splatter-fest finale.