Savage Theories - Readings

Description

"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.

About the Author

Pola Oloixarac nació en Buenos Aires, en 1977. Estudió Filosofía en la Universidad de Buenos Aires y es autora de las novelas Las teorías salvajes, traducida a seis idiomas, y Las constelaciones oscuras. En 2010 fue elegida entre los mejores narradores en e spañol por la revista Granta y recibió la beca de Letras del Fondo Nacional de las Artes. Escribió el libreto de la ópera Hércules e n el Mato Grosso, representada en el Centro de Experimentación del Teatro Colón en 2014 y en Nueva York en 2015. Ha recibido becas del International Writing Program en Iowa, Banff, Yaddo, Amsterdam Writer in Residence y Dora Maar, entr e otras. Colabora con artículos para The New York Times, entre otros, y edita la revista bilingüe digital Buenos Aires Review.