Post Magic Realism: Story from Argentine writer in The New Yorker

Argentine writer Cesar Aira (crossword-puzzle makers around the world are thanking heaven for providing this name) appears in The New Yorker this week with a story called The Musical Brain - I've never heard of Aira, and wonder if TNY sees him as another one of the Latin American writers whom they will introduce to a wide, English-speaking audience (the most recent being Bolano - too late for Balano to enjoy the renown, sadly): This story though not perfect (it ends kind of nowhere, and I wonder if it's actually a piece from a longer work?) is really distinct and unusual. The long history of Latin American magic realism and highly imaginative writing (e.g., Borges, Cortazar) very evident in the ancestry of this story, yet Aira puts his own touch on the material - you could almost call it post-Magic Realism. Story begins as what seems to be an ordinary memoiristic story - mature writer recalling moment of his youth when he had dinner in a fine restaurant with his family - and then something strange happens in the restaurant: people bring boxes of books up to an older woman at a head table. We think, how could this be? What? And then Aira explains it was some kind of fundraiser and we're thinking, OK, maybe the customs are different in Argentina, and we go on thinking this is a realistic story and then another odd thing happens - and it really takes quite a while before we get our bearings and realize that this whole fictive world is like a dream-state, vivid and real memories mixed with surreal events and circumstances (two feuding dwarfs entombed in a blood-filled statue, e.g.) - but all told with a cool, controlled tone and diction. Aira is clearly in the tradition of Kafka, as well - and I hope we'll see more of his work in English.