What to Do

by Pablo Katchadjian, Priscilla Posada (Translator)

Overview

A nameless narrator and his friend Alberto move through a constantly morphing continuum of dream-like situations while discussing philosophy, literature, and war. The impossible question of an enormous student in a lecture hall at an English university sets off a series of alternate paths that open before them like a fan. In taverns, boats, and plazas, the two protagonists discuss John Donne, Lawrence of Arabia, and Lenin with English students, a group of young and old women, and eight hundred drinkers, all the while being dropped from one strange place into the next. A remarkable work of refined surreal comedy. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781628971996
Publisher:	Deep Vellum Publishing
Publication date:	12/29/2016
Series:	Argentinean Literature
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	345 KB

About the Author

Pablo Katchadjian was born in Buenos Aires in 1977. He is the author of three novels—What To Do, Thanks, and Total Freedom—and a wide array of short stories, poems, and essays. His artistic collaborations include an operatic adaptation of his work alongside the composer Lucas Fagin.
Priscilla Posada is a literary translator from Spanish into English. She​ is currently working on a translation of Pablo Katchadjian's novel Thanks.​

What People are Saying About This

Damián Tabarovsky

“If the book overflows with talent, if for moments it borders on genius . . . it’s because What To Do . . . is the great contemporary novel on the expansion of meaning, its amplification, its mutation.”

Editorial Reviews

If the book overflows with talent, if for moments it borders on genius . . . it’s because What To Do . . . is the great contemporary novel on the expansion of meaning, its amplification, its mutation.” -Damián Tabarovsky

"Argentinean wunderkind Katchadjian is currently in legal trouble in his native country for daring to remix a novel by the late writer Jorge Luis Borges, so it's an interesting time to introduce him to English readers." -Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

2015-11-19
A writer and his friend talk about all manner of things while the world dissolves around them like a Salvador Dali painting. Argentinean wunderkind Katchadjian is currently in legal trouble in his native country for daring to remix a novel by the late writer Jorge Luis Borges, so it's an interesting time to introduce him to English readers. This slim, surrealistic novel is utter nonsense, but at least it's literary gibberish that's quite fun to read in the right frame of mind. In the opening pages we meet our nameless narrator and his friend, Alberto, who spend their days lecturing about a variety of subjects at an English university. Of course, on the opening page we also see Alberto grab a questioning student and stuff him into his mouth, as one does. The author is clearly playing with literary conventions, but his automatic writing style is jarring as he makes his playful but absurd attempt at capturing the narrative of thought. There's a lot of this: "Then, we're suddenly in an English university and we teach. Then we run through a forest. Then we're in a tavern with eight hundred wine drinkers. Then we're in a plaza with an old man who is also a pigeon." Perhaps Katchadjian is trying to say something about the nature of change, as people and places in the novel constantly transmogrify and shift. The novel still has its touchstones—sometimes the narrator and his friend are on a ship trying to reach an island; sometimes they find themselves at war. But mostly they're endlessly lecturing at an English university before the universe decides to drop them into another strange and different situation. The overall effect falls somewhere between the delicate constructions of Cesar Aira and Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five (1969). An aesthetically pleasing but perplexing experiment that may prove too improvisational for many readers.

Kirkus Reviews