Ship of Theseus

Jatte is the 19th and final book authored by V. M. Straka.

Spoiler-Free Information
The book was authored by V. M. Straka, translated by F. X. Caldeira and published by Winged Shoes Press on October, 1949. It was the only Straka novel to be published with Winged Shoes, all his previous novels were published by Karst & Son.

Synopsis of the Book
The book follows and unnamed protagonist who washes up in the shore of an unknown city with amnesia. He gests involved in several affairs of great controversy while looking for his identity.

Structure
Ship of Theseus in the only Straka book to contain a foreword, footnotes and various comentaries. All this, according to Caldeira, is against Straka's own wishes as he, in his previous novels, never included any of these.

The book is dividen in ten chapters and has one interlude. Most of the story is written in the third person (except for a brief fragment in the interlude which uses a second person narrative) and uses the unnamed protagonist, S., as POV for most of the book (there are several exceptions from this).

According to Caldeira, the tenth and final chapter was incomplete (due to the events of Havana detailed in the foreword) so Caldeira opted to fill in the blanks of the final chapter, making it more of a co-authorship, although many people think Caldeira overstepped.

At the end of the book we find out that the Havana story is true: Caldeira did only managed to get her hands on the incomplete manuscript of the tenth chapter and reconstructed it, filling some blanks. Later, in the late 70's, a mysterious man (probably Desjardins) gave Caldeira the missing manuscript pages but she chose not to read them and, during the events of the margins, she gives the pages to Eric and Jen.

Antecedents
According to F. X. Caldeira, Straka mentioned to her that he was working on a suite of literary caprices without knowing its final shape; he tentantively called it "The Principality of Rumor". It evolved to the Ship of Theseus.

Connections
It has connections and allusions to most if not all of his previous works.

Reception
Commercially the book was and is considered a failure.

Many important critics gave it unfavorable reviews, most notably Edsel B. Grimshaw who "riped it to shreds" and argued that the main character, S., has too good of an intuition. The scene in page 106 of the English version was especially critized by Grimshaw who said it was "comptemptuous of readerly desire" to digress from the previously stablished action.