Mona by Pola Oloixarac

Pola Oloixarac's Mona fearlessly confronts the absurdity of the literary establishment, and leaves the reader questioning whether all great art is inherently violent

Book Review by Andrés Ordorica | 31 Jan 2022
  • Mona
Book title: Mona
Author: Pola Oloixarac, translated by Adam Morris

Pola Oloixarac’s Mona, translated by Adam Morris, reads like Charlie and The Chocolate Factory for adults. It fearlessly confronts the absurdity of the literary establishment. Like her protagonist, Oloixarac leaves the reader questioning whether all great art is inherently violent and ultimately a curse for those plagued by the need to create it.

Mona’s premise is deliciously chaotic with each contestant of an elite literary prize battling it out while suffering breakdowns and crises of confidence. Against a Swedish lakeside, the novel plays out as a ruthless examination of the literati and 21st-century identity politics. Mona (the protagonist) subverts a culture of affirmative action by leveraging the very markers thrust upon her as a female writer of colour. She scoffs at how they meant nothing to her before emigrating from Peru to the United States, but still, she leverages them to rise to the top of her university’s writing department. Her observations are bitter and refreshing, and although she loves the literary world, she is not afraid to call out all its hypocrisies.

While brandishing her wit around the competition, Mona is haunted by some dark, internal trauma represented by unexplained bruises on her body. This violence surfaces elsewhere during the four-day ceremony when Mona finds animal remains out in the open. But instead of solving these mysteries, Mona chooses to go on a pill-induced rampage which feels very apt for this darkly humorous novel.


Serpent's Tail, 3 Feb, £12.99
serpentstail.com/work/mona