Call Me Magdalena

Erotic entanglements, startling revelations, a furtive intruder, even a possible murder? Not at all what the students of Mind Control class envisioned when they gathered on a ranch outside Buenos Aires for a relaxing weekend. But here nothing is quite what it seems, least of all Magdalena herself, who while recounting the weekend's events, changes her name as often as she changes her mind. Within the taut framework of a murder mystery, Alicia Steimberg weaves a tale far more concerned with who-is-it than with whodunit. In what is probably the celebrated author's most interesting and complex novel, Magdalena conducts us through her tortuous childhood as an Argentine Jew and through her doubts about morality and mortality, the existence of God, and the amorphous nature of identity. Animated by Steimberg's lively dialogue and wit, this eccentric tour of some of the more pressing questions about gender, identity, and existence itself is finally as intriguing and suspenseful as the mysteries large and small, otherworldly and mundane, that it invites us to contemplate.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Bison Books
Published: 09/01/2001
ISBN: 9780803292826
Pages: 137
Weight: 0.41lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.52w x 0.36d

Review Citations: Publishers Weekly 08/13/2001 pg. 282
Library Journal 09/01/2001 pg. 236
Kirkus Reviews 09/15/2001 pg. 1324
Multicultural Review 06/01/2002 pg. 67