By profession I am a soldier, a general in the glorious Roman army. As a playwright, I think of myself as a sublime amateur. In Cesar Aira's new novel, Fulgentius, a sixty-seven-year-old imperial Roman general--"Rome's most illustrious and experienced"--is sent to pacify the remote province of Pannonia.He is a thoughtful, introspective person, a saturnine intellectual who greatly enjoys being on the march away from his loving family, and the...