The Musical Brain & Other Stories consists of twenty stories about oddballs, freaks, and crazy people from the writer The New York Review of Books calls “the novelist who can’t be stopped.” The author of at least eighty novels, most of them barely 96 pages each, with just nine of them so far published into English, Aira’s work, and his fuga hacia adelante or flight forward into the unknown has already given us imponderables to ponder, bizarre and seemingly out of context plotlines to consider, thoughtful, and almost religious, certainly passionate takes on everyday reality. The Musical Brain is the best sampling of Aira’s creativity so far, and a most exhilarating collection of characters, places, and ideas.