This book is a treatise on poetics written in the form of conversations, a map of reality as seen by what is probably the most outstanding Argentine author alive. An extraordinary narrator and unavoidable critic, he pays tribute to Faulkner, lucidly examines texts by Arlt, Borges and Cortázar, reflects on the police genre, narration in cinema, editorial work, his beginnings as a writer, the state use of the language, of the novel and its secret tension with the machinations of power.