Olenka: “This playful novel twists and turns like a Rubik’s cube.”

Romantic obsession drives this intelligent 1983 novel from Darma and translated by Tsao, who won the PEN Translation Prize for Darma’s People from Bloomington. Long on literary allusions and absurdist fantasies, the story is narrated in short chapters by Fanton Drummond, who, like Darma, studied at Indiana University in Bloomington. It’s not love at first sight but intense curiosity when Fanton encounters the alluring Olenka on an elevator in their apartment building. Not long after they become lovers, Fanton meets a man named Wayne and deduces that Wayne is Olenka’s husband. Fanton decides Olenka is his soulmate, and his love transforms into an obsession that heightens during her periodic absences, to the point that he licks a park bench where she once sat. The plot is far from linear; its detours and film and literary references reflect the movement of an intellectual mind, which is part of the appeal, as is Fanton’s decidedly unreliable narration. This playful novel twists and turns like a Rubik’s cube.