Itzel I

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The first of two-part novel, Itzel I tells the story of three disparate characters swept up in the drama of the Mexican student movement of 1968 whose ending in the Massacre in Tlatelolco on October 2nd, a date now always commemorated in Mexico, changed their lives forever. Broad in scope and exuberant in style in the best tradition of Latin American literature, this book roots its readers in the ebullience of Mexico’s daily life and language, even as they are made to confront the horrors of history, to examine the difficulties of friendship and family.

AUTHOR

Sarah Xerar Murphy

Prize winning author of eight books of fiction and memoir, Sarah Xerar Murphy is also widely recognized for her spoken word performance, and social justice work. Her bi-racial, bilingual and multicultural background combine with long-term residence in all three of North America’s largest countries to bring electrifying authenticity to her creations. She currently resides in Bocabec, NB.

Reviews

The dazzling fluency, the technical virtuosity, the energy and exuberance – they’re all here. Sarah Murphy is entertaining and reckless and wittily self-conscious about language and story-telling, but make no mistake: She is a literary and political subversive. If you haven’t read her before, hold onto your hat. You are in for a wild ride.

In this audacious novel of many mixed ancestries, Sarah Murphy writes beautifully not only of but within the lives of exiles, thoughtful lives in haunted Mexico, lives that teem with the blockages and narrow escapes we call history. Such tenderness and intelligence are rarely found within the same covers. She plants them all over Itzel for the hungry reader.

Sarah Murphy has done the undo-able: written, in strange magnificent future-tense prose about events that were kept hidden until 30 years after they’d been perpetrated. We understand the movement that culminated in Tlatelolco and the country that produced it, finally, as we come to understand Nauta, Itzel, Basta and the others who populate this rich and rewarding novel. Is it a novel? Memoir? Who cares? It must be read.