The Opportune Moment, 1855 could be seen as an introduction tot Ouředník’s most successful book Europeana. The naive establishing of ‘free settlements’, whose inhabitants should share everything – including women -, preordains the attempts for building a new society, which we have witnessed in the twentieth century. Ouředník shows with fantastic exaggeration how difficult, or almost impossible, it is to have people agree on matters when all conventions are rejected. The ship, with the disinherit people from Europe, is a sailing Tower of Babel, whose passengers are unable to find a common speech. That is fully brought to light in the settlement Fraternidade that they built, where in stead of ‘freedom’ actually ‘anarchy’ reigns.

Not to be overlooked, the book contains Ourednik’s typical dry humour – carried by the fine use of language – and is at times extremely funny.

“A treasure of historical and imaginative detail converge in this fascinating work about a group of disenchanted Europeans who travel to Brazil in the mid-19th century to start a utopian society.”

— Publishers Weekly

“Anarchy and its utopian sisters are at the heart of this epistolary tale, written in a deliciously Voltairean (French) style.”

— Libération

“The exciting thing about this novel is the fact that world history is at best a suitable backdrop for a timeless group drama that couldn’t be more petit bourgeois, even though all the group members desperately want to be different. (…) It is thanks to Ouredník’s flair for the right tone, for comedy through restrained storytelling, that the material can certainly be read as a model.”

— Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

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