The Sinking of Odradek Stadium

The Sinking of Odradek Stadium is a brilliant comedy composed of an exchange of letters between a husband living in the Miami of the not-too-distant future and his wife living in an Italy of the not-too-remote past. He is Zachary McCaltex, an overweight, emotional intellectual--or in any event a librarian. She is the charming Twang Panattapam, a woman discovered by Zachary in PanNam, a Southeast-Asian country that was once an Italian Colony. Together they are trying to make their fortune by tracing the whereabouts of a treasure supposedly lost off the coast of Florida in the sixteenth century. Once the epistolary convention is accepted, the novel unfolds with demonic logic. The two protagonists infect each other with enthusiasm and doubt, until a lost letter subverts their exchange. The native Twang gains confidence and independence, while Zachary little by little goes to pieces.