Leave to Remain

Leave to Remain is a faux spy-novel possessed by the spirit of Janus: doubleness, duplicity, double-entendres, two-facedness, bridges and doorways—as is only appropriate for a work composed by two writers, one French, one American. In their earlier hybrid essay, A Prank of Georges (2010), Thalia Field and Abigail Lang returned us to “the primal force of language: naming” (Susan Howe). In Leave to Remain, a weathered Janus pursues an elusive quest, responding to a world of war, traitors, translations, and the slippery personal and political terrain between friend and enemies. This silly and deadly serious fiction aims at nothing less than a full inquiry into how monstrous we are when we define loyalties and defend definitions, and how we are all double-agents seeking meaningful and intelligence.

Thalia Field has published three collections with New Directions Press, most recently Bird Lovers, Backyard, as well as a performance novel with Coffee House. Her most recent novel, Experimental Animals (A Reality Fiction), was published by Solid Objects. Leave to Remain is her second collaboration with Abigail Lang, following A Prank of Georges, published by Essay Press.

Abigail Lang teaches American Literature and Translation at Université Paris-Diderot and is a member of the Double Change collective, which promotes exchanges between US and French poetry. She has translated many modern and contemporary poets into French, from Antin to Zukofsky.