From the critically acclaimed author ofSavage TheoriesandDark Constellations comes Pola Oloixarac'sMona, where success as a "writer of color" proves to be a fresh hell for a young Latin American woman at a literary conference in Sweden. Mona, a Peruvian writer based in California, presents a tough and sardonic exterior. She likes drugs and cigarettes, and when she learns that she is something of an anthropological curiosity--a woman writer of color treasured at her university for the flourish of rarefied diversity she brings--she pokes fun at American academic culture and its fixation on identity. When she is nominated for "the most important literary award in Europe," Mona sees a chance to escape her downward spiral of sunlit substance abuse and erotic distraction, so she trades the temptations of California for a small, gray village in Sweden, close to the Arctic Circle. Now she is stuck in the company of all her jet-lagged--and mostly male--competitors, arriving from Japan, France, Armenia, Iran, and Colombia. Isolated as they are, the writers do what writers do: exchange compliments, nurse envy and private resentments, stab rivals in the back, and hop in bed together. All the while, Mona keeps stumbling across the mysterious traces of a violence she cannot explain. As her adventures in Scandinavia unfold, Mona finds that she has not so much escaped her demons as locked herself up with them in the middle of nowhere. InMona, Pola Oloixarac paints a hypnotic, scabrous, and ultimately jaw-dropping portrait of a woman facing down a hipster elite to which she does and does not belong. A survivor of both patronization and bizarre sexual encounters, Mona is a new kind of feminist. But her past won't stay past, and strange forces are working to deliver her the test of a lifetime.

Mona: A Novel

Literature & Fiction

OLOIXARAC, POLA

United States

Farrar. Straus and Giroux

From Pola Oloixarac, the critically acclaimed author of Savage Theories and Dark Constellations, comes Mona, in which success as a "writer of color" proves to be a fresh hell for a young Latin American woman at a literary conference in Sweden. Mona, a Peruvian writer based in California, presents a tough and sardonic exterior. She likes drugs and cigarettes, and when she learns that she is something of an anthropological curiosity--a woman writer of color treasured at her university for the flourish of rarefied diversity she brings--she pokes fun at American academic culture and its fixation on identity. When she is nominated for "the most important literary award in Europe," Mona sees a chance to escape her downward spiral of sunlit substance abuse and erotic distraction, so she trades the temptations of California for a small, gray village in Sweden, close to the Arctic Circle. Now she is stuck in the company of all her jet-lagged--and mostly male--competitors, arriving from Japan, France, Armenia, Iran, and Colombia. Isolated as they are, the writers do what writers do: exchange compliments, nurse envy and private resentments, stab rivals in the back, and hop in bed together. All the while, Mona keeps stumbling across the mysterious traces of a violence she cannot explain. As her adventures in Scandinavia unfold, Mona finds that she has not so much escaped her demons as locked herself up with them in the middle of nowhere. In Mona, Pola Oloixarac paints a hypnotic, scabrous, and ultimately jaw-dropping portrait of a woman facing down a hipster elite to which she does and does not belong. A survivor of both patronization and bizarre sexual encounters, Mona is a new kind of feminist. But her past won't stay past, and strange forces are working to deliver her the test of a lifetime.

Mona

Picador Paper

Esta compilación es el resultado de la transcripción textual de los conversatorios que tuvieron lugar en Zoom, en marzo de 2024, con motivo del vigésimo aniversario de&nbsp;A Contracorriente: una revista de estudios latinoamericanos. Dichos conversatorios contaron con la participación de cuatro destacados escritores latinoamericanos, Pola Oloixarac (Argentina), Jorge Volpi (México), Patricio Pron (Argentina) y Nona Fernández (Chile); asimismo, sus interlocutores fueron los críticos Ariel Schettini, Héctor Jaimes, Greg Dawes y María Rosa Olivera-Williams, respectivamente. En las reflexiones generadas a partir de estos diálogos se exploran las formas en que la literatura actúa como herramienta de resistencia frente al neoliberalismo contemporáneo.

El lugar de la literatura en el mundo neoliberal: Conversatorios con Pola Oloixarac, Jorge Volpi, Patricio Pron y Nona Fernández (Spanish Edition)

Fernández, Nona

Volpi, Jorge

PRON, PATRICIO

History & Criticism

Editorial A Contracorriente

"A stunning vibrant maximalist whirlwind of a novel. Oloixarac’s wit and ambition are evident on every page. By comparison, most other contemporary fiction seems a little dull and simple-minded." —Hari Kunzru, author of White Tears and Gods Without Men A debut novel of seduction and madness, hate and love, set in the world of Argentine academia and animated by the spirits of Wittgenstein, Rousseau, Nabokov and Bolaño Rosa Ostreech, a pseudonym for the novel’s beautiful but self-conscious narrator, carries around a trilingual edition of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, struggles with her thesis on violence and culture, sleeps with a bourgeois former guerrilla, and pursues her elderly professor with a highly charged blend of eroticism and desperation. Elsewhere on campus, Pabst and Kamtchowsky tour the underground scene of Buenos Aires, dabbling in ketamine, group sex, video games, and hacking. And in Africa in 1917, a Dutch anthropologist named Johan van Vliet begins work on a theory that explains human consciousness and civilization by reference to our early primate ancestors—animals, who, in the process of becoming human, spent thousands of years as prey. Savage Theories wryly explores fear and violence, war and sex, eroticism and philosophy. Its complex and flawed characters grapple with a mess of impossible, visionary theories, searching for their place in our fragmented digital world.

Savage Theories

Humor & Satire

Soho Press

Humor & Entertainment

Humor

Argentinian literary star Pola Oloixarac’s visionary new novel races from the world of 19th-century science to an ultra-surveilled near future, exploring humanity’s quest for knowledge and control, and leaping forward to the next steps in human evolution. Canary Islands, 1882: Caught in the 19th-century mania for scientific classification, explorer and plant biologist Niklas Bruun researches Crissia pallida, a species alleged to have hallucinogenic qualities capable of eliminating the psychic limits between one human mind and another. Buenos Aires, 1983: Born to a white Argentinian anthropologist and a black Brazilian engineer, Cassio comes of age with the Internet and becomes a prominent hacker, riding the wave of transformations brought about by distributed networks, mass surveillance, and new flows of globalized capital. The southern Argentinian techno-hub of Bariloche, 2024: A research group works on a project that will allow the Ministry of Genetics to track every movement of the country’s citizens without their knowledge or consent, using sensors that identify DNA at a distance. But the new technology contains within it the seeds of a far more radical transformation of human life and civilization. In a novel of towering ambition, Oloixarac’s complexly intertwining stories reveal the power that resides in the world’s most deeply shadowed spaces.

Dark Constellations

Literary

Argentinian literary star Pola Oloixarac’s visionary new novel races from the world of 19th-century science to an ultra-surveilled near future, exploring humanity’s quest for knowledge and control, and leaping forward to the next steps in human evolution.\nCanary Islands, 1882: Caught in the 19th-century mania for scientific classification, explorer and plant biologist Niklas Bruun researches Crissia pallida, a species alleged to have hallucinogenic qualities capable of eliminating the psychic limits between one human mind and another.\nBuenos Aires, 1983: Born to a white Argentinian anthropologist and a black Brazilian engineer, Cassio comes of age with the Internet and becomes a prominent hacker, riding the wave of transformations brought about by distributed networks, mass surveillance, and new flows of globalized capital.\nThe southern Argentinian techno-hub of Bariloche, 2024: A research group works on a project that will allow the Ministry of Genetics to track every movement of the country’s citizens without their knowledge or consent, using sensors that identify DNA at a distance. But the new technology contains within it the seeds of a far more radical transformation of human life and civilization. In a novel of towering ambition, Oloixarac’s complexly intertwining stories reveal the power that resides in the world’s most deeply shadowed spaces.

'Devil-may-care daring and biting humour . . . Think Rachel Cusk's autofiction on skunk and OxyContin and you're in the right ballpark' The Times\n'In a literary culture swamped by clenched, worthy fiction and the writer as activist, her satirist's misanthropy and taste for provocation are a tonic' Observer\n'Enjoyably mischievous and daring' Financial Times\n'Ruthless, very funny' New York Times\n'A wicked satire of the literary elite and an exploration of art and violence' New Yorker\nMona is a Peruvian writer based on a Californian campus, open-eyed and sardonic, a connoisseur of marijuana and prescription pills. In the humanities she has discovered she is something of an anthropological curiosity - a female writer of colour treasured for the flourish of rarefied diversity that reflects so well upon her department.\nWhen she is nominated for 'the most important literary award in Europe', Mona sees a chance to escape her sunlit substance abuse and erotic distraction, and leaves for a small village in Sweden. Now she is stuck in the company of her competitors, who arrive from Japan, France, Armenia, Iran and Colombia. The writers do what writers do: exchange flattery, nurse envy and private resentments, stab rivals in the back and go to bed together.\nBut all the while, Mona keeps stumbling across traces of violence on her body, the origins of which she can't - or won't - remember.

Mona: Pola Oloixarac

Contemporary

Serpent's Tail

SEUIL

Kryptozän

Wagenbach Klaus GmbH

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