I read Ouředník’s Europeana back in 2006, after something in the blurb persuaded me I might enjoy it. I loved it. I even picked it as one of my top five books of the year. I was less enamoured of his Case Closed, although it was good enough for me to continue to read him. The Opportune Moment, 1855, despite its unwieldy title, is not as good as Europeana, but it’s still huge fun. The novel opens with a letter from an Italian in 1902 to his beloved, before moving back half a century to the titular year and the journal of an Italian anarchist who travels to Brazil with a group of like-minded souls – well, not entirely like-minded, as they bicker and argue throughout the trip – to join a utopian community called Fraternitas. The book then jumps to six months after their arrival, and gives four slightly different entries on the first few months in the community. In each of them, the community fails because of the failings of its members; and while it makes for good satire to poke fun at idealism, not everyone is venal and corrupt despite all their protestations of high ideals. Ouředník is definitely worth reading, and The Opportune Moment, 1855, is very good, but it does feel a bit like shooting fish in a barrel, and even though the book is very funny in parts, and very good on human nature, I prefer my utopian fiction with a happy ending. Oh, and I’d really like to see more of Ouředník’s fiction translated into English. ( )

This delightful and thought-provoking novel tells the tale of a "free" settlement of anarchists and others in the Brazilian wilderness in 1855. It starts with a 1902 letter from the now old Italian anarchist who planned these Fraternitas settlements to a woman has always loved; it is full of high-flown language about principles of love and freedom and anarchism, interspersed with some regret. The novel then goes back to 1855 and the diary of an Italian who set off on the journey to the new community.

The diary starts with the two-month sea voyage and the diarist, who we come to learn is named Bruno, is an acute observer of his fellow passengers, who include not only the Italian group but also some French communists, some very poor Germans, and various others, including some Slavs and some "Negro" workers. One of the group is a committed anarchist who believes in complete freedom; another believes they need to have leaders and structure and votes and "reprimands" and lots and lots of meetings. There also is a strong belief in "free love," which more or less amounts to sharing the women in the group, although the women have something to say about this too. Much of this is quite amusing, although fraught, because of the matter-of-fact way in which Bruno reports what's going on. He also becomes interested in a woman on the ship and discusses this most delicately. (Later on, she tells him that she would be willing to sleep with him but is sleeping with someone else because "first she had to get used to it.")

The diary starts again six months into the stay at the settlement, and things have not gone according to plan. Although the reader doesn't realize it ta first, Bruno will tell the story of what has happened and what is happening in several different ways, so the reader doesn't know which is the truth, or if in some way all of them are.

I didn't quite know what to expect when I started this book, but it seems to me that besides being a well-told and intriguing story, it is a meditation on the conflict of ideals and desires -- desires for love, for control, for money -- and a satire as well. And it also could be a comment on some of the more horrific aspects of 20th century history, as when one of the characters thanks "everyone who had voted for the strictest sanction (i.e., execution) and hadn't let themselves be appeased by unconvincing excuses, because humanity is more important than individual human life." And, in one version of what happened to the settlement, Bruno notes that "Individual freedom has been temporarily suspended because it turns out that people aren't ripe for it yet, although it remains our goal in consideration of the fact that it's the first requirement of harmonious development."

But this is the opposite of a dogmatic book. It wears its thoughts lightly and is a fun, if serious, novel.