How To Leave A Country
A novel by Cris Mazza

PEN/Nelson Algren Award Winner

"Talent jumps off her like an overcharge of electricity. . . . Mazza refuses to clarify, to give into realism or allegory. She prefers to let the ripples of her puzzle carry us into the murk at the edge of the pool. . . . To stir us with those lyrical, savage scenes."

- Los Angeles Times Book Review

Winner of the PEN Nelson Algren Award for Fiction, this first novel closely examines a relationship that poses questions about the nature of love, reality, and the power of the imagination, with the captivating nuances of a born story-teller.

Phelan, a sculptor, and Tara, the painter he lives with, are engaged in a strange relationship. She remembers the events from his life, but not her own. He remembers the impulse for her paintings, but she cannot remember painting them. As she recalls significant episodes from Phelan’s life - childhood seductions, adolescent obsessions, and adult disappointments - the intensity of his emotions is apparent, but the reality of his perceptions remains in question. Deft strokes and haunting images distinguish this luminous first novel.

Upon granting the novel the prestigious PEN Nelson Algren Award while still in manuscript, judges Grace Paley, Studs Terkel, and Roger Groenig wrote that How to Leave a Country "would seem to be the work of a young person, but only because of its freshness. Its clarity and simplicity, however suggest an older writer’s attention and experience. . . . We see the beloved bare fact of fiction; that is, the life of the story happening without explanation or the common masks of cynicism or sentiment."

Cris Mazza is the author of Dog People and Exposed. Her widely published stories have been described by The New York Times Book Review as "remarkable."

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