The Leto Bundle
a novel, 2001 Chatto & Windus, UK Farrar Straus Giroux (US) 2002 Vintage (paperback) UK, Simon & Schuster (hardback) US
Leto, a picaresque heroine of our times, spans time and space: she has twins, lives for a time with wolves, stows away on a ship loaded with plundered antiquities, and works in a hotel in the war-torn city of Tirzah. Eventually, she reaches the present day and becomes a servant in the household of Gramercy Poule, a rock star.
Drawing on mythology, fairytale, medieval chronicles and contemporary events, The Leto Bundle explores the trials and struggles of a refugee, it examines issues of identity and exclusion, motherhood and survival.
long-listed for the Booker Prize, 2002
Extended reviews
The Leto Bundle is a… portrayal of a woman who, through all her desperate incarnations, remains a recognizable and sympathetic figure, not just a pathetic symbol of the dispossessed. Leto’s sojourn as a menial hotel worker in contemporary Tirzah is extremely powerful. Less successful are the assorted plotlines woven through the modern sections of the story, especially those involving a self-absorbed folk singer named Gramercy Poule.
Elizabeth Hand The Washington Post
