The Foreigners

A glittering energetic novel about three women-each experiencing an awakening in the gloriously conflicted and sexy city of Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires is a city of Parisian affections and national anxiety of amorous young lovers seedy ports flooded slums and a dazzling social elite. Into this heady maze of contradiction and possibility enter two women: Daisy an American divorcée; and Isolde a beautiful lonely Austrian. In Buenos Aires Isolde finds that her blond European looks afford her entrée to the kind of elite alluring social world she never would have had access to in her home country but her ascension also sets her up for a long surprising fall. Meanwhile Daisy joins forces with Leonarda a chameleonic Argentine with radical dreams of rebellion who transfixes Daisy with her wild effervescence. Soon Daisy is throwing off her American earnestness and engaging in a degree of passion manipulation and risk-taking in a way she never has before. Buenos Aires has allowed her to become someone else.Against the throbbing backdrop of this shimmering and decadent city- almost a character in itself-Maxine Swann has created a stunning narrative of reawakened sensuality and compulsive desire that simultaneously explores with remarkable acuity themes of foreignness displacement and the trembling metamorphoses that arise from such states. From the award-winning critically celebrated author of Flower Children The Foreigners is a startlingly bold and original unforgettable next novel.