Cleopatra Dismounts: A Novel

Carmen Boullosa is one of Latin America’s most original voices, and in Cleopatra Dismounts she has written a remarkable reconstruction of the life of the Egyptian queen, who famously died in Marc Antony’s arms. But is this really the true Cleopatra? Through the intervention of Cleopatra’s scribe and informer Diomedes, Boullosa creates two previous Cleopatras, and in effect two deliriously wild other lives for the young monarch-a girl escaping the intrigues of royal society, and the young queen who is carried across the sea on the back of a magical bull, to live among the Amazons and become part of their society. Magical, multifaceted, and rippling with luminous imagination, Cleopatra Dismounts is a work that recalls Jeanette Winterson’s Sexing the Cherry and confirms Carmen Boullosa as an important international voice.