Mona
-
- $119.00
-
- $119.00
Descripción editorial
'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
'Enjoyably mischievous and daring' Financial Times
'Ruthless, very funny' New York Times
Mona 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.
When 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.
But all the while, Mona keeps stumbling across traces of violence on her body, the origins of which she can't - or won't - remember.
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.
