Mona
A Novel
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
A sardonic Peruvian writer is thrust into a bizarre world of literary rivalries, erotic distractions, and mysterious traces of violence at a prestigious European award ceremony in this hypnotic and scabrous portrait of a woman facing down a hipster elite.
Mona, a Peruvian writer based in California, presents a tough exterior. She pokes fun at American academic culture and its fixation on identity when she learns that she is treasured at her university for the flourish of rarefied diversity she brings. When nominated for "the most important literary award in Europe," Mona sees a chance to escape her downward spiral of sunlit substance abuse and trades the temptations of California for a small, gray village in Sweden, close to the Arctic Circle.
Isolated with her jet-lagged—and mostly male—competitors arriving from Japan, France, Armenia, Iran, and Colombia, the writers do what writers do: exchange compliments, nurse envy and resentments, stab rivals in the back, and hop in bed together. All the while, Mona keeps stumbling across mysterious traces of a violence she cannot explain.
In Mona, Pola Oloixarac paints a jaw-dropping portrait of a new kind of feminist survivor of patronization and bizarre sexual encounters. But Mona's past won't stay past, and strange forces are working to deliver her the test of a lifetime in this wicked satire of the literary elite and exploration of art and violence.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Argentinian writer Oloixarac (Dark Constellations) offers a smart, provocative take on contemporary literary culture. At the novel's opening, Stanford doctoral candidate Mona, a deeply cynical Peruvian, wakes up on a train platform in Palo Alto, Calif., with her body badly bruised and no memory of how she came to be in such a state. She quickly cleans up so she can travel to Sweden for a conference where she's been nominated for an award. At the event, speakers express anxiety about technology's impact on literature, but far more interesting are Mona's exchanges with fellow writers and her theory-infused interior monologues. Aware that being a Latina gives her a "chic sort of cultural capital" with American universities, she reflects on the tendency of writers to play up "their own local colors." After Mona hooks up with another writer who notices her bruises, her memories of the injuries sustained back at Stanford start to return. While a sudden and not entirely successful swerve into fantasy makes for an abrupt ending, Mona's spirited opining gives readers much to engage and argue with. The rich inner life of its namesake character propels this vibrant examination of the writing world.
