The latest addition to my website is César Aira‘s Margarita. This is not one of Aira’s best. The narrator, presumably based at least in part on Aira himself, is, just eighteen, and is to leave his hometown of Coronel Pringles (Aira’s hometown) to study in Buenos Aires. As the date approaches he is suddenly overcome by a terrible fear of leaving his friends and family but manages to overcome it by writing poetry. The family will later go to spend summer in their large family house. Margarita, whose father has challenged the Argentinian authorities and been persecuted for it, is staying nearby with her father. The narrator and Margarita have an apparently non-sexual, nature-based relationship, which is short-lived as her father has to leave suddenly. And that is it. Give this one a miss.