This novel written in 1934 piques my curiosity quite a bit, has anyone read it yet?
I’m copying and pasting the following regarding the book:
"Op Oloop is a Finnish statistician living in Buenos Aires.
He has strictly structured his life within the certainties that only numbers provide him, shaping his daily routine around an obsession with calculation, yielding to an existence forged by discipline.
He is harsh in his judgments, precise in his complaints, affable in demeanor, and ready for revenge when he believes he has been wronged.
He meticulously carries out every whim of his habit until April 22, 1934, when an external pressure, impossible to manage with rationality alone, overwhelms his routine.
Franziska, his fiancée, awaits him at their engagement party, but a trivial taxi accident prevents him from arriving on time. The mishap is an anomalous wave that, in the emotional seismograph of Op Oloop, breaks the banks of his identity until it submerges the perfection of his method into the depths of his psyche.
The statistician thus succumbs to radical anarchy, blowing apart every social convention he had been a staunch defender of until that moment."
The unexpected and total madness of Op Oloop shapes the plot and its narrative, as if Juan Filloy wants to convey that literature is only truly such when all inhibitions and reticences are finally set aside.
With a vivid style, a consistently cheerful tone, and a sustained rhythm, Filloy delivers to the reader the perfect and detailed account of a man's madness, tracing in language and form the key to a narrative that becomes polyphonic, with notes that are sometimes jarring, sometimes sweeter, successfully achieving what few can: writing a work with an unmistakable melody.
"Op Oloop" by Juan Filloy, Printed by Ago Edizioni in 2024, 356 pages translated by Giulia Di Filippo, €19.00 - ISBN: 9788894755435
On the cover: Kyvèli Zoi, It’s About Time, 2021 - Oil on linen, 25×20 cm - Courtesy of the artist and Acappella Gallery
