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.
Oloixarac delivers a scathing indictment of the book circuit, where nobody wants to point out that the emperor has no clothes ... Even if the cynicism feels heavy-handed at times, Mona emerges as an intriguing subject, a woman who worries that the sum of her talents distills down to nothing more than her potent yet fragile sexuality.
Argentinian writer Oloixarac offers a smart, provocative take on contemporary literary culture ... 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.
In this third novel by Argentinian Oloixarac, an award ceremony for a major European literary prize takes an apocalyptic turn ... Savage Theories displayed the dizzying, at times manic, promise of a writer making original connections between wide-ranging subjects. This is a narrower effort and a considerably less successful one. There's a lot of material here: ideas about what it means to write, about politics and South American literature ... But there's little narrative cohesion between them ... Disappointing, because this author can do better.
