Overview

A novel of seduction and madness, animated by the spirits of Wittgenstein, Rousseau, Nabokov and Bolao.Buenos Aires. The mysterious narrator, who is 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 strategically seduces a former leftist guerilla and toys with him, blurring the lines between prey and predator. Parallel to this narrative, we follow little Kamtchowsky as she grows from sexually liberated adolescent to transgressive documentary filmmaker. Through her and her boyfriend Pabst's intellectual and sexual misadventures, we witness the underground scene of Buenos Aires as they dabble in ketamine, group sex, video games and pornography. As an aside, 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.

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9781800818187

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Reviews

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 Philosophy gets sexy in Pola Oloixarac's Savage Theories * Vanity Fair * [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 * The New York Times Book Review * While there are echoes of Borges and Bolaño here, the synthesis of ideas and the manic intelligence are wholly new. Brilliant, original, and very fun to read * Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review * A radical, bitingly funny debut novel offers a veritable hurricane of ideas on topics from technology to anthropology and features parallel arcs, one involving a student obsessed with her professor and the other about a couple cruising the Buenos Aires underground * O, Oprah Magazine * Pola Oloixarac is one of the great writers of the Internet, the only country larger than Argentina -- Joshua Cohen, author of Moving Kings This debut novel announces a huge, rambunctious talent, with its hilarious and ribald glimpse of intellectual and sexual politics in a post-post revolutionary Argentina * Boston Globe * San Francisco's Pola Oloixarac, named one of Granta's Best Young Spanish Novelists, takes the reader on a surreal journey through her native Argentina in Savage Theories * Mercury News * Savage Theories presents a deep-focus tableau wherein theory and praxis, subject and object, past and present share a single stage in an ongoing, immemorial drama. Its kaleidoscopic vision of a densely layered life-world illuminates the sheer scope of existence. Oloixarac's creative force is ferocious, comprehensive, tidal. Her debut novel formulates one of the most thoroughgoing theories of the way we live now * Rumpus * Oloixarac's brilliant, dextrous, debut novel, is a twisty tale of academia, lust, and culture. The author's ability to incorporate diverse elements, including 1970s Argentinian sex comedies, early 20th-century psychological theory, Elton John and Thomas Hobbes singing in bed, makes for singular and humorous experience. Perhaps best of all is Oloixarac's prose: discursive, surprising and off-kilter-like the characters themselves, it reveals a ceaseless appetite for understanding and belonging * Publishers Weekly, Starred Review * [A] transgressive novel of revolution, desire, and academia . . . Savage Theories compels with its energetic characters, and the seamless blend of desire and theorizing is contagious on both fronts * Words Without Borders * In this dazzling, frantic tour de force, Argentine author Oloixarac traces several intertwining threads. She also manages to resurrect ghosts from Argentina's Dirty War and dive headfirst into the twenty-first century's strange technological frontier...readers willing to indulge this careening carousel of a novel will be rewarded with an unexpectedly prescient experience * Booklist * Clearly one of the first Latin American classics of the twenty-first century * El Mundo * A prodigious, masterful novel * Le Figaro * A strange, bewildering debut novel, an eccentric baroque fantasy * Les Inrockuptibles * Savage Theories is a novel of ideas, exploring the violent nature of humans . . . this is the type of book you read when you want great writing and to learn something about the world * Translated Lit * Pola Oloixarac's prose is the great event of the new Argentinian narrative. Her novel is unforgettable, philosophical and very serene -- Ricardo Piglia, author of Target in the Night Monstrously clever and terribly funny. More than a debut, this book is one many of us would spend our lives trying to write -- Javier Calvo, author of Wonderful World A provocative, brave, controversial novel -- Vicente Luis Mora, author of Pangea: Internet, Blogs and Communication in a New World

'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 'Philosophy gets sexy in Pola Oloixarac's Savage Theories' - Vanity Fair '[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' - The New York Times Book Review 'While there are echoes of Borges and Bolano here, the synthesis of ideas and the manic intelligence are wholly new. Brilliant, original, and very fun to read' - Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review 'A radical, bitingly funny debut novel offers a veritable hurricane of ideas on topics from technology to anthropology and features parallel arcs, one involving a student obsessed with her professor and the other about a couple cruising the Buenos Aires underground' - O, Oprah Magazine

Author Information

Pola Oloixarac was born in Buenos Aires in 1977. She is one of the Granta best young Spanish-language novelists. She was awarded the 2021 Eccles Centre & Hay Festival Writer's Award. Oloixarac is a regular contributor to The New York Times, and her fiction has appeared in Granta, n+1, The White Review and Freeman's. She lives in Barcelona.

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