In Lost Cities Go to Paradise, poetry breaks into song and poetic prose becomes lively storytelling as Alicia Borinsky raises intimate questions about the fragility of contemporary life. Composed of many layered scenes, unforgettable characters, snapshots, and vignettes, this collection of quick-witted poems and short fiction mixes deceit and conceit with moments of tenderness and the elusive nature of humanity, asking if identity is more than a festival of masks and self-invention.
           
At the center of Borinsky’s work are the cities, which are a masquerade of disaster and spectacle that moves through space and time. Within these cities reside a man with two bills who gives three out of generosity, a woman who hides her face so that she may be better seen, cheating lovers who betray only to end up entwined in a tango, and immigrants who borrow each other’s accents. Filled with energy and irreverence, Lost Cities Go to Paradise captures the indignities and excitement of living among others in a society and discovering what is valued—and all that is not.

Alicia Borinsky teaches Latin American and comparative literature at Boston University, where she also directs the Buenos Aires Cultural Studies Program. Her books include Frivolous Women and Other Sinners, also published by Swan Isle Press. Regina Galasso is assistant professor of comparative literature in the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

— Charles Hatfield, Center for Translation Studies, University of Texas at Dallas

— Suzanne Jill Levine, University of California-Santa Barbara

— World Literature Today

— “Enrique Anderson Imbert” (2021), ANLE ( Academia Norteamericana de la Lengua Española)