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.Two-faced Janus resurrects into a time-traveling adventure, a tour of double-agents, double-speak, and double-dealings. 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-essay 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. Unafraid of being both timeless and timely, Leave to Remain challenges the reader to play in the world of folded imagery and language.

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.Two-faced Janus resurrects into a time-traveling adventure, a tour of double-agents, double-speak, and double-dealings. 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-essay 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. Unafraid of being both timeless and timely, Leave to Remain challenges the reader to play in the world of folded imagery and language.