259 Leaps: The Last Immortal

by Alicia Kozameh, Clare Sullivan (Translator)

Overview

"Alicia Kozameh’s 259 Leaps is a surprising, engaging, exhilarating book from a gifted writer with a major tale to tell—the contemporary experience of exile—not only because of her prison experience in Argentina and her wandering years in many countries, but because exile is, in this book, the very condition of language. Exile is the site of communication and the locus of speech; it is the excess of life that only language can shelter and host. The writer’s pilgrimage, thus, traces the construction of the book, and the book humanizes the space of exile." —Julio Ortega, professor, Brown University


This novel of exile focuses on the disassociative aspects of culture shock, language barriers, and political evolution.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780930324872
Publisher:	Wings Press
Publication date:	10/01/2006
Edition description:	Wings Press ed.
Pages:	178
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.51(d)

About the Author

Alicia Kozameh fled political oppression in Argentina. She is the author of several novels in her native Spanish.

Editorial Reviews

Alicia Kozameh’s 259 Leaps is a surprising, engaging, exhilarating book from a gifted writer with a major tale to tell—the contemporary experience of exile—not only because of her prison experience in Argentina and her wandering years in many countries, but because exile is, in this book, the very condition of language. Exile is the site of communication and the locus of speech; it is the excess of life that only language can shelter and host. The writer’s pilgrimage, thus, traces the construction of the book, and the book humanizes the space of exile.” —Julio Ortega, professor, Brown University

From the Publisher

Though fictional, this work retraces the author's biographical path through the narrative voice of Sara, revisiting territory Kozameh covered in her first novel, Steps Under Water. Like her creator, Sara is an Argentine-born writer who was imprisoned for three years in her hometown, Rosario, for her activism. The experimental narrative opens in the 1970s as Sara, newly released from prison, flees political oppression rather than joining the ranks of the disappeared, or desaparecidos. The exiled Sara lives alternately in both Los Angeles and Mexico before finally returning home. Kozameh relates Sara's story through 259 individual sections-the leaps that give the novel its title. These leaps are poetic fragments vaulting readers through Sara's memories, feelings, experiences, and mostly her ruminations about life in exile. The complex and disjointed writing reveals only glimpses of Sara's life in prison and in exile rather than the total picture, but these lyrical glimpses still effectively convey the emotional consequences of Sara's torture and solitary confinement. Recommended for large Latin American fiction collections.
—Faye A. Chadwell

Library Journal