Borges en Estocolmo

Winning the Nobel Prize in Literature is the ambition of any self-respecting writer. Especially when he risks the glory of being the first to receive it in his country. After appearing on the favorites lists for several years, it seems that César Aira's time has come to enjoy that moment and that condition. This fiction narrates the vicissitudes of the writer's trip from Buenos Aires to Stockholm, his dream stay in the Nordic city and his return to an Argentina where he is not expected. In the end, the 2024 Nobel Prize for Literature appears to have been awarded to the Elder writer, with a Galician pedigree, Cesárea Areas. Through an extensive play on words, this parody tries to dismantle the remnants of postmodernity that are still in force in the literary and academic worlds. The key is humor, which cannot stop being corrosive to be so. Also tenderness, because underneath the greatest ambitions the most insignificant motivations tend to be found. Whoever manages to laugh, without guilt (or with it), will like the vices most deeply rooted in the altars of culture and the most recalcitrant social stereotypes. In short, who wants to take a walk through nonsense, lift the cobblestones of postmodernity and peek at whatever may be below. A new normal?