"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 friends 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 meaning and intelligence"--

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