Margins
The Foreigners book cover
The Foreigners
2011
First Published
2.57
Average Rating
272
Number of Pages

A glittering, energetic novel about three women-each experiencing an awakening in the gloriously conflicted and sexy city of Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires is a city of Parisian affections and national anxiety, of amorous young lovers, seedy ports, flooded slums, and a dazzling social elite. Into this heady maze of contradiction and possibility enter two women: Daisy, an American divorcée; and Isolde, a beautiful, lonely Austrian. In Buenos Aires, Isolde finds that her blond European looks afford her entrée to the kind of elite, alluring social world she never would have had access to in her home country, but her ascension also sets her up for a long, surprising fall. Meanwhile, Daisy joins forces with Leonarda, a chameleonic Argentine with radical dreams of rebellion, who transfixes Daisy with her wild effervescence. Soon, Daisy is throwing off her American earnestness and engaging in a degree of passion, manipulation, and risk-taking in a way she never has before. Buenos Aires has allowed her to become someone else. Against the throbbing backdrop of this shimmering and decadent city- almost a character in itself-Maxine Swann has created a stunning narrative of reawakened sensuality and compulsive desire that simultaneously explores with remarkable acuity themes of foreignness, displacement, and the trembling metamorphoses that arise from such states. From the award-winning, critically celebrated author of Flower Children, The Foreigners is a startlingly bold and original, unforgettable next novel.

Avg Rating
2.57
Number of Ratings
248
5 STARS
4%
4 STARS
14%
3 STARS
33%
2 STARS
34%
1 STARS
15%
goodreads

Author

Maxine Swann
Maxine Swann
Author · 4 books

Maxine Swann (born February 11, 1969) is an American fiction author. Swann grew up on a farm in southern Pennsylvania, before attending Phillips Academy and then Columbia College, where she studied under Mary Gordon. She pursued her graduate studies at the Sorbonne, Université de Paris VII, earning her master's degree in 1997 with a thesis on the style of Marcel Proust. She now lives in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She has won the O. Henry Award and the Pushcart Prize. She is a Founding Editor of the bilingual literary magazine "The Buenos Aires Review." She has taught creative writing at Barnard College and also works as a private writing coach.

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