Pola Oloixarac – författare

'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 TimesMona 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.

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 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.

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.

''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 TimesMona 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.

A contemporary classic from one of Latin America's most exciting young writers'A stunning vibrant maximalist whirlwind of a novel. Oloixarac's wit and ambition are evident on every page' Hari KunzruBuenos Aires. The mysterious narrator, a student at the School of Philosophy, stalks a middle-aged professor, desperate to reveal that she alone understands his theories. Unable to earn his affection, she instead seduces a former guerilla and toys with him, blurring the lines between prey and predator. At the same university, bored student Kamtchowsky and her boyfriend Pabst's intellectual and sexual misadventures take them through the underground scene of Buenos Aires as they dabble in ketamine, group sex, video games and pornography. And in 1917 Africa, a Dutch anthropologist named Johan van Vliet theorises the development of beast into man, and humanity's longstanding flirtation with beastly acts.Climaxing with an Internet hack that catalogues historical violence, devastation and atrocity throughout the centuries, Savage Theories is a kaleidoscopic collage that is spellbinding, strange and ground-breaking.'An exuberant blend of political satire and sexual picaresque. This book rewards total immersion: Come for the inevitable Borges allusions, stay for the wild ride' New York Times

A contemporary classic from one of Latin America''s most exciting young writers''A stunning vibrant maximalist whirlwind of a novel. Oloixarac''s wit and ambition are evident on every page'' Hari KunzruBuenos Aires. The mysterious narrator, a student at the School of Philosophy, stalks a middle-aged professor, desperate to reveal that she alone understands his theories. Unable to earn his affection, she instead seduces a former guerilla and toys with him, blurring the lines between prey and predator. At the same university, bored student Kamtchowsky and her boyfriend Pabst''s intellectual and sexual misadventures take them through the underground scene of Buenos Aires as they dabble in ketamine, group sex, video games and pornography. And in 1917 Africa, a Dutch anthropologist named Johan van Vliet theorises the development of beast into man, and humanity''s longstanding flirtation with beastly acts.Climaxing with an Internet hack that catalogues historical violence, devastation and atrocity throughout the centuries, Savage Theories is a kaleidoscopic collage that is spellbinding, strange and ground-breaking.''An exuberant blend of political satire and sexual picaresque. This book rewards total immersion: Come for the inevitable Borges allusions, stay for the wild ride'' New York Times

'An audacious book that is seductive precisely because it dares to shock' Emmanuel CarrèreHe's got a ten-foot dick but he won't commit. He doesn't rate your work. He - maybe - gave you herpes. His wife doesn't even know. Isn't it time to take him down? The women in Pola's circle have had enough of these so-called bad hombres, these irresistible instruments of the patriarchy who won't align themselves to the new mode. Sure, what they've done is mostly hearsay, or consensual, and now they could lose their careers, their homes - but isn't cancellation what they deserve, perhaps the only lesson they will understand? Caught between the good feminists and the bad hombres, unsure which side to take, she unpicks their versions of the truth. When suspicion can be weaponised against anyone - including herself - who can survive unscathed?Translated from Spanish by Adam Morris

Zu Beginn der 1980er Jahre kommen sich in der subtropischen Sommerhitze Brasiliens eine Anthropologin und ein Flugzeugingenieur näher. Das Resultat dieser Verbindung von jüdisch-argentinischer und brasilianischer DNA heißt Cassio Liberman Brandão da Silva: Der Held ist geboren.Sozialisiert mit Castle Wolfenstein und Musik von den Dead Kennedys, erweist sich Cassio früh als Wunderkind der Kryptografie, dessen Viren in der Hacker-Szene als Kunstwerke betrachtet werden. Doch wie so oft bei Genies ohne Talent zur Entschlüsselung ihrer Mitmenschen, vereinsamt er zusehends. Der Programmierjob im Start-up ist eine Beleidigung für sein Gehirn und der Untergrundruhm vergessen – bis aus dem Nerd schließlich ein Weltenretter wird: Als Cassio genetische und digitale Daten zu mischen beginnt, erkennt er eine Wahrheit, die andere Forscher lange vor seiner Zeit bereits erahnt hatten.Auch Pola Oloixarac mischt in Kryptozän den Abenteuer- mit dem Bildungsroman und schafft, angereichert mit einer Prise Science-Fiction und abgründigem Humor à la Houellebecq, den ersten Hackerroman mit philosophischem Tiefgang.

Sie möchten sich von einem Roman verzaubern lassen? Literarische Figuren kennenlernen, mit denen Sie sich identifizieren können, die zu guten Freunden werden? In Wilde Theorien gibt es nichts davon – nur Intellektuelle mit empathiefreiem Weltzugang, Lust an der Provokation und dem unstillbaren Wunsch, zu dominieren.Die wunderschöne Erzählerin, eine Philosophiestudentin, trägt stets eine dreisprachige Aristoteles-Ausgabe bei sich, umkreist einen Ex-Guerillakämpfer und ist überzeugt, die Theorie ihres überforderten Professors endlich vervollständigt zu haben. Dann sind da die kleine Kamtchowsky und ihr Freund Pabst, so überhebliche wie hässliche Außenseiter, die in die Subkultur von Buenos Aires eintauchen, moralische Videospiele entwerfen und in ihrer Bilderstürmerei vor kaum einer Geschmacklosigkeit zurückschrecken. Und zuletzt gibt es einen niederländischen Anthropologen, der erklärt, wie die Bestie Mensch zum Menschen wird – bevor er im Urwald verschwindet …Ein überbordender, wilder Roman über das Irrlichtern großer Geister und eine jahrtausendealte, immer wieder hervorbrechende Gewalt.

"Una retratista filosa y valiente capaz de llevarnos hasta el límite y más allá para desnudar a nuestros políticos y reducirlos a risa o a espanto". Jorge Fernández Díaz"Pola Oloixarac recurre al exigente género del retrato para hacer pasar a la dirigencia argentina por el scanner de su imaginación literaria. Desnuda así un núcleo de la política que el análisis convencional suele eludir o negar: las emociones, lo subliminal, el borde. Lo hace con el sentido del humor que se merecen figuras que casi nunca logran convertirse en admirables". Carlos Pagni"Pola Oloixarac es una agent provocateur de la biografía política. Y su libertad para pintar con agudeza y lisergia los personajes del drama del poder hace de sus textos una fuente de revelaciones que pueden ser hilarantes, sagaces o impiadosas, pero siempre recortadas por el filo de lo veraz". Cristina Pérez"La prosa de Pola Oloixarac es el gran acontecimiento de la nueva narrativa argentina". Ricardo Piglia