Fervor de Buenos Aires - Jorge Luis Borges

Borges is an outstanding South American author. This is a collection of poems in praise of his hometown, the capital city of Argentina, Buenos Aires.
Unlike other works about the city, this doesn't deal with the usual (stereotypical) topics such as the port districts, tango, Italian and Spanish heritage.

Esperanto - Rodrigo Fresán

 

Esperanto is the name of a language that its creator thought could be used by everyone, but that isn’t actually used by anyone. And it is also the name of this novel’s main character. Esperanto is a 35-year-old troubled musician, who hasn’t written a song for a long time. A friend of his and her baby went desaparecidos during the Argentina military junta era, while the baby’s father, a revolutionary fighter, was killed in action. A few years after that tragic day Esperanto was somehow considered responsible for his own child’s death and the resulting mental breakdown of his partner.

When in Rome...wash your ass as the Romans do - with photo gallery

My friend LMB's Florentine bidet

I've often happened to hear some Italians complaining after finding out that in some country there is no such a thing as a bidet, something that made them wonder whether people there wash their asses or not after taking a shit.
Well, as a matter of fact in some places they don't. They use a lot of toilet paper, they scratch and scratch, then throw and throw, until the last piece of paper they've used doesn't show any of those typical brownish skid marks we all know so well. Unfortunately sometimes they have to scratch so much that the vanishing of the shit residue is matched by a simultaneous appearance of blood traces. The skin of the sandpapered area is in fact quite sensitive.

However, sometimes the lack of a bidet doesn't necessarily mean that in that place people don't actually wash their butt before standing up from the bowl. I'd like to emphasize the word before. In Italy in fact - or anywhere bidets are commonly used - we have to stand up, take a couple of steps, turn around and sit down again, on a ceramic surface by the way, which, lacking any sort of plastic cover, can become annoyingly cold. Bidets in facts are not necessarily the best solution to a dirty ass issue.