Staff Pick
Holding fast to her reputation as a writer of pyrotechnic erudition, Argentinian agitator Pola Oloixarac dabbles in everything from botanical arcana to incel hacktivism, biosurveillance to reptile porn, and — when in one of her more charitable moods — favorably recalls the midway point between Tony Tulathimutte and Helen DeWitt. Bookended, more or less, by tropic psychedelia and stuffed in the center with a comparatively crowd-pleasing origin story for a stunted tech whiz, Dark Constellations will zoom right over the heads of most, myself included, but the breeze sure feels fine. Recommended By Justin W., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
Argentinian literary star Pola Oloixarac's visionary ambitious second novel investigates humanity's quest for knowledge and control, hurtling from the 19th century mania for scientific classification to present-day mass surveillance and the next steps in human evolution.
Canary Islands, 1882: Caught in the 19th-century wave of scientific classification, explorer and plant biologist Niklas Bruunis researches Crissia pallida, a species alleged to have hallucinogenic qualities capable of eliminating the psychic limits between one human mind and another.
Buenos Aires, 1983: Born to a white Argentinian anthropologist and a black Brazilian engineer, Cassio comes of age with the Internet, and demonstrates the skills and personality that will make him one of the first great Argentine hackers.
The southern Argentinian techno-hub of Bariloche, 2024: Piera, on the same research group as Cassio, studies human DNA. When the Estromatoliton project comes to fruition, the Argentine government will be able to track every movement of its citizens without their knowledge or consent, using censors that identify DNA at a distance.
In a dazzling novel of towering ambition, Oloixarac proves that true strength resides in the world's most deeply shadowed interstices, as beautiful and horrifying as dark constellations themselves.
Review
“Pola Oloixarac is one of the great writers of the Internet, the only country larger than Argentina.” Joshua Cohen, author of Book of Numbers
Review
“Dark Constellations is a grand saga of the anthropocene fever dream, spanning numerous continents, centuries, and species. With the technophilic, psychedelic flair of Thomas Pynchon and William Gibson, Pola Oloixarac tacks up miles of red yarn between 19th-century explorers, Argentinian cryptographers, secluded island tribes, computational biologists, and more. A novel of high style and heavyweight ideas, Dark Constellations charts a sublime order through the ritualistic carnage of science. Also, sex.” Tony Tulathimutte, author of Private Citizens
Review
“With Dark Constellations, Pola Oloixarac exceeds the high expectations she set with Savage Theories, her deliciously wicked debut. Whip-smart and gleefully irreverent, Oloixarac’s new novel establishes her as Argentina’s most ferocious literary export. Fusing sci-fi and slapstick, Dark Constellations goes where no American writer would dare to tread. If you thought satire was dead, you hven’t been reading Pola Oloixarac.” Adam Morris, author of American Messiahs: False Prophets of a Damned Nation
Review
“Pola Oloixarac seems to be one epistemological step ahead…An ingenious coming-of-age novel of the internet and a philosophical trip.” Tagesspiegel
Review
“A fascinating and bewildering dystopian and fantastic novel. The language couldn’t be more bold, brimming over with erotic metaphors and philosophical references.” Der Spiegel
Review
“One of the first classics of Spanish literature in the 21st century.” El Mundo
About the Author
Pola Oloixarac is a fiction writer and essayist. Her novels, Savage Theories and Dark Constellations, have been translated into eight languages. She wrote the libretto for the opera Hercules in Mato Grosso, which was staged in Buenos Aires’s Teatro Colón and New York City, and her fiction has appeared in Granta, n+1, and The White Review, among others. Her pieces on politics and culture have appeared in The New York Times and on the BBC. She currently writes a weekly column in Perfil. She splits her time between Miami and Buenos Aires.