Irreverent, playful and prolific, Argentinean author César Aira has written over seventy books and has been acknowledged internationally to be one of the most original and provocative authors in world literature. Collected here are three of his most acclaimed books, to be published for the very first time in the UK. In Ghosts, an immigrant worker's family are squatting on the haunted construction site of a luxury condominium building. All of the workmen and their families see the ghosts which float around the place, but one teenage girl's interest in them becomes so intense that her mother realizes her life is in the balance. An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter tells of a point in the life of German painter Johann Moritz Rugendas, when he visits Latin America to paint its spectacular landscapes. There, a strange episode interrupts his trip and irreversibly marks him for life. And in The Literary Conference, a young translator called César Aira travels to a literary conference, intent on world domination . . .