La sala / The Room

«Me fascina la capacidad que tiene para contar sus propias historias, ya sean fábulas políticas o elaboradas bromas inventadas, cargadas de la más pura filosofía». – Patti Smith

En el centro de París ha abierto un pequeño cine en el que incesantemente entra y sale una compacta feligresía de jóvenes coreanos. ¿Qué es lo que pasa allí dentro? El misterio atrae a un electricista desocupado que se ha mudado desde la periferia a una buhardilla para realizar el sueño de escribir. Evasivo e inesperado, ese anhelo hará que deserte de su clase y renuncie a sus convicciones ideológicas para terminar involucrado en el registro ficcional y minucioso del negocio turbio que —en paralelo— desarrollan los administradores del lugar.

Escrita originalmente en francés en 1996, ahora traducida por el autor, La Sala recupera, entre la nostalgia y la parodia, la atmósfera de las breves novelas que publicaba en esos años Éditions Minuit, entre ellas las de Marguerite Duras, que aquí hace más de una aparición espectral.

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

César Aira’s previously unpublished French novel about a strange cinema in Paris and an electrician who dreams of becoming a writer.

“I am fascinated by his ability to tell his own stories, whether they are political fables or elaborate invented jokes, loaded with the purest philosophy.” —Patti Smith

In the center of Paris, a small cinema has opened, where a compact congregation of young Koreans incessantly come and go. What goes on inside? The mystery attracts an unemployed electrician who has moved from the suburbs to a garret to pursue his dream of writing. Elusive and unexpected, this desire will cause him to abandon his social class and renounce his ideological convictions, only to end up involved in the fictional and meticulous recording of the shady business that—in parallel—the administrators of the place are developing.

Originally written in French in 1996 and now translated by the author, The Room recaptures, between nostalgia and parody, the atmosphere of the short novels published in those years by Éditions Minuit, including those by Marguerite Duras, who makes more than one spectral appearance here.