With a twisted sense of humour and a heavy dose of fantasy, Katchadjian takes those things that are so common as to be ordinary—bad bosses, crazy loved ones, descent into drug use—and sets them in a realm reminiscent of Kafka or Kojève. Our narrator presents us with a constantly moving array of bizarre, philosophically tinged excitement: a slave rebellion in a strange castle on an unnamed island; an attack of flying worms made of ash which represent either Adam's sin or the Oedipal complex; a feral young woman who lives off the grid on whatever she can scrounge; and a hallucinatory root that throws the narrator into a black void from which he fears he may never escape.
Pablo Katchadjian was born in Buenos Aires in 1977. He is the author of three novels—including What to Do, published in English translation by Dalkey Archive Press—and a wide array of short stories, poems, and essays. His artistic collaborations include an operatic adaptation of his work in cooperation with composer Lucas Fagin.
Priscilla Posada is a literary translator of Spanish-language literature. She has previously translated Katchadjian's What to Do for Dalkey Archive Press.