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Over the next nine days, we’ll be highlighting a book a day from the Best Translated Book Award fiction longlist. Click here for all past write-ups.

by Juan Filloy. Translated from the Spanish by Lisa Dillman. (Argentina, Dalkey Archive)

I waited years for this book to come out. Years. Back in the early 2000s I went on an editors trip to Germany that was organized by the wonderful Riky Stock and included stops in Munich, Berlin, and Frankfurt. During one of these visits (my memory! I assume now that I’ve been in publishing for 10 years, I can start forgetting some details, right?) I met with the guys from Tropen Verlag, who not only were super-cool, but told me that rather than pimp any of their German authors, the one person I needed to pay attention to was a semi-obscure Argentine author named Juan Filloy.

Once I got back to the States, I started looking into Filloy and this handful of facts convinced me that no matter what, we (re: Dalkey Archive) had to publish him:

• He lived in three centuries���Ĵ�ý�born in the nineteenth, and passing away in 2000 at the age of 106;

• Julio Cortazar loved him, and references Filloy’s Caterva in chapter 108 of Hopscotch;

• Freud was a fan of Op Oloop, which led to a personal correspondence between the two;

• Filloy was a lover of palindromes and wrote over 6,000;

• and, not to be overlooked, almost all fifty-plus of his novels and collections of poems have seven-letter titles. (Op Oloop, Caterva, Vil y Vil, so on and so forth.)

The plot of Op Oloop is pretty simple: it chronicles the final day and night in the life of its titular character, Op Oloop, a Finnish transplant in Buenos Aires who is recently engaged to Franziska, the Finnish consul���Ĵ�ý�s niece. As he likes to state, Op Oloop is a ���Ĵ�ý�man of method,���Ĵ�ý� a statistician who lives his life in a very orderly, pre-arranged way.

Thus, Op Oloop was convinced yet again that it was simply impossible for him to act contrary to his nature. ���Ĵ�ý�SUNDAY: WRITING, BETWEEN 7:00 AND 10:00 A.M.���Ĵ�ý� That was the rule. When life is as ordered as a mathematical equation, you can���Ĵ�ý�t just skip a digit whenever you feel like it. Op Oloop was entirely incapable of any impromptu act that might violate the pre-established norms of his routine; even such a trivial, graphical set such as addressing an envelope he���Ĵ�ý�d already begun while still within the allotted time.

It���Ĵ�ý�s clear from the start that Op Oloop isn���Ĵ�ý�t all there���Ĵ�ý�his speech to the employees at his local spa about the need to unite on tipping and form a ���Ĵ�ý�Gratuity International���Ĵ�ý� is proof enough���Ĵ�ý�but on this particular day, things go from bad to worse, as Op���Ĵ�ý�s ���Ĵ�ý�method���Ĵ�ý� is thwarted and he can���Ĵ�ý�t regain his sense of order.

Filloy���Ĵ�ý�s protagonist is a step beyond eccentric, and Lisa Dillman���Ĵ�ý�s ability to capture his peculiar speech, wordplay, and insanity is quite impressive. This is especially true in the lengthy section detailing Op Oloop���Ĵ�ý�s special dinner with his friends (in preparation for him to sleep with his 1,000th prostitute���Ĵ�ý�a situation that doesn���Ĵ�ý�t go according to plan and is the final nail that breaks Op���Ĵ�ý�s mind). This dinner is the section of the book that seems most Cortazar-like (Hopscotch is filthy with groups of characters bantering and making statements about Argentina and its people), although Filloy���Ĵ�ý�s not quite as tight and witty and fluid as Cortazar (who is?).

���Ĵ�ý�In Hollywood, everyone knows the caloric value of everything. Just as they all aspire unanimously to stardom, they���Ĵ�ý�re all equally fanatical about being tres mince rather than overweight. Truly, there���Ĵ�ý�s a veritable obsession with fat. Dieting forces them all to undertake endless calculations and combinations. All portions are measured on a basis of one-hundred-calorie units. For example, one hundred calories equals: a tablespoon of honey, or two mandarin oranges, or four dates, or twenty asparagus tips, or a quarter-inch thick steak measuring five inches long and two and a half inches wide . . .���Ĵ�ý�

���Ĵ�ý�So you must���Ĵ�ý�ve gone round with tape measures, eyedroppers, and scales . . .���Ĵ�ý�

���Ĵ�ý�It���Ĵ�ý�s not a joke. You know, I���Ĵ�ý�ve noticed that Argentines in general tend to be quite sarcastic, yet they���Ĵ�ý�re entirely lacking in humor deep down. They make fun of everything in particular, and yet as a nation are all unanimously dull. It���Ĵ�ý�s truly incongruous!���Ĵ�ý�

As the novel lurches from scene to scene, Filloy creates an interesting account of one man���Ĵ�ý�s mental breakdown. With the exception of what happens at the whorehouse, most of the underlying motivations for his breakdown are mysterious, summed up by the idea that he���Ĵ�ý�s ���Ĵ�ý�method personified.���Ĵ�ý� A more conventional book would delve into this issue, maybe explain how the hell he ended up with Franziska in the first place, etc., etc., but this isn���Ĵ�ý�t a conventional book. Which is why it’s on the Best Translated Book Award fiction longlist . . .