No of Pages: 240
RRP: 29.95
ISBN Print: 1 876040 50 5
The Incantation of Frida K
The Incantation of Frida K. explores the extraordinary life of a woman artist, one damaged at an early age but whose power to create transcends her wounds. “I was born in rain and I will die in rain,” begins Braverman’s imagined journey through the life of Frida Kahlo.
We are inside the mind of Frida, at 46, on her deathbed, racked with memories and hallucinations. We shiver on the threshold of life and death, dream and reality, truth and myth as Frida wraps her senses around the places, events and conversations of her past, creating her own distinct universe in the process. Frida K. navigates the alleys and opium dens of San Francisco’s Chinatown in the 1920s, of Paris in the 1930s (where she rubs shoulders with and snubs André Breton and Pablo Picasso), the Park Avenue salons of Rockefeller’s New York, and back to Coyoacán, her corner of Mexico City. Braverman’s Frida openly scorns her lover, Diego Rivera, for his “predictable geometry and conventional vision”. In language brutally lyrical, seductive and utterly original, Kate Braverman has carved out a bold interpretation of an artist to whom she is vitally connected.
“A fascinating exploration of the inner world of an icon.” Alix Kates Shulman
About the Author
Kate Braverman is a native of Los Angeles. She was an activist in the 1960s in Berkeley. A member of the Venice Poetry Workshop and professor of creative writing at California State University, she also taught creative writing at the UCLA Writer’s Program. Since 1995, she has lived with her husband, Alan, and daughter, Gabrielle, in the Allegany Mountains. Braverman has published three novels – Lithium for Medea, Palm Latitudes, and Wonders of the West – four books of poetry, and two collections of short stories. Her stories Tales from the Mekong Delta and Pagan Night are widely anthologised, and her work has been selected for Best American Short Stories. In 1992 she received the O. Henry Award.
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