Ghosts is about a construction worker’s family squatting on a building site. They all see large and handsome ghosts around their quarters, but the teenage daughter is the most curious. Her questions about them become more and more heartfelt until the story reaches a critical, chilling moment when the mother realizes that her daughter’s life hangs in the balance.
Aira’s literary significance, like that of many other science fiction writers, comes from how he pushes us to question the porous line between fact and fantasy, to see it not only as malleable in history, but also blurred in the everyday. The engrossing power of his work, though, comes from how he carries out these feats: with the inexhaustible energy and pleasure of a child chasing after imaginary enemies in the park.
— Los Angeles Review of Books
Ghosts is heady, vertigo-inducing fantasia. . . . Aira is one of the most provocative and idiosyncratic novelists working in Spanish today, and should not be missed.
— The New York Times Book Review
Ghost’s aesthetic delights are captured with delicate precision by the translator Chris Andrews.
— Natasha Wimmer, New York Times Sunday Book Review
