The Lizard's Tail - Softcover

?To read her is to enter our reality fully, and to participate in a search for a Latin American identity which continues to enrich itself. The books of Luisa Valenzuela are our present but they also contain much of our future; there is real sun, real love, real liberty in each of her pages? Julio Cortazar ?Luisa Valenzuela has written a wonderfully free, ingenious novel about sensuality and power, history and death, the ?I? and literature. Only a Latin American could have written The Lizard?s Tail, but there is nothing like it in contemporary Latin American literature? Susan Sontag ?Luisa Valenzuela is the heiress of Latin American fiction. She wears an opulent, baroque crown, but her feet are naked? Carlos Fuentes

The Lizard?s Tail is a whip much favoured by Latin American torturers. It gives its name to this fictional biography of Lopez Rega, Isabel Peron?s minister of social well-being who ruled Argentina through sorcery and witchcraft. A figure of immense power and cruelty, Lopez Rega survives all attempts by politicians and the military to overthrow him. So great is the magic of this power-crazed witch-doctor that the writer / narrator can destroy him only by removing herself: 'By erasing myself from the map, I intend to erase you. Without my biography, it will be as if you never had a life. So long, Sorcerer, felice morte.? In The Lizard?s Tail, Luisa Valenzuela re-invents language to convey the political reality of Latin America. A reality in which the writer hangs in the balance.