Cleopatra Dismounts

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Carmen Boullosa is one of Latin America’s most original voices, and in Cleopatra Dismounts she has written a remarkable imaginary life of one of history's most legendary women. Dying in Marc Antony’s arms, Cleopatra bewails the end of her political career throughout ancient Egypt, Greece, and the Mediterranean. But is this weak woman the true Cleopatra? Through the intervention of Cleopatra's scribe and informer Diomedes, Boullosa creates two deliriously wild other lives for the young monarch—a girl escaping the intrigues of royal society to disguise herself and take up residence with a band of pirates; and the young queen who is carried across the sea on the back of a magical bull, to live among the Amazons. 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.