What to Do [Paperback]

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.?? The overall effect falls somewhere between the delicate constructions of Cesar Aira and Kurt Vonnegut'sSlaughterhouse Five(1969). -Kirkus Reviews???If the book overflows with talent, if for moments it borders on genius . . . it???s becauseWhat To Do. . . is the great contemporary novel on the expansion of meaning, its amplification, its mutation.??? -Dami??n 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