The Incantation of Frida K.

a novel

“[Braverman’s] talent, uncorked, is as bold and brave and beautiful as anything we see from writers of her generation. Her latest work of fiction, a pulsating prose meditation on the life and death of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, makes that abundantly clear.” —Alan Cheuse, in the San Francisco Chronicle

“Imaginative and assured...[Braverman] has produced a masterful work in The Incantation of Frida K.” —Bookforum

“Braverman’s literary genius shines here as she takes on the voice of Frida Kahlo, which emerges with the luminous and haunting tone one would imagine the late Mexican artist would have.” —Library Journal (starred review)

“A story that belongs to Frida as much as to the American writer.” —Reforma

“Dazzling and illuminating…Braverman has a talent for lyrical and hallucinatory language that neatly matches her subject, the interior musings of Frida Kahlo.… To read this book is not only to understand what made the artist tick, it is also to feel the excruciating ticking of a life fueled by pain.” —Washington Post Book World

“Braverman deliberately mixes genres, creating a new kind of syntax influenced by poetry, music, performance art, memoir, and biography.” —American Book Review

“I was born in rain and I will die in rain,” begins Kate Braverman’s The Incantation of Frida K., an imagined life journey of Frida Kahlo. The book opens and closes inside the mind of Frida K., at 46, on her deathbed, taking us through a kaleidoscope of memories and hallucinations where we shiver for two hundred pages on the threshold of life and death, dream and reality, truth and myth. Defiant and uncompromising, Frida bears the wounds of her body and spirit with a stark pride, transcending all limitations, wrapping her senses around the places, events, and conversations in her past. Frida K. interacts from her hospital bed with her mother, sister, Diego, and her nurse. She calls herself a “water woman,” navigating into unexplored dimensions of her world, leading us through the alleys of San Francisco’s Chinatown, of Paris in 1939 (where she rubbed shoulders with André Breton), and of her neighborhood in Mexico City, Coyoacan. Her voyage is an inward one, an incantation before dying. In The Incantation of Frida K., Braverman’s language dances and spins. She carves out a bold interpretation of the life of an artist to whom she is vitally connected.

Kate Braverman is a native of Los Angeles. She has published three other novels, Lithium for Medea, Palm Latitudes, and Wonders of the West; four books of poetry, Lullaby for Sinners, Milkrun, Hurricane Warnings, and Postcards from August; and a collection of stories, Squandering the Blue. She was a 1992 O. Henry Award winner for her short story, “Tall Tales from the Mekong Delta.” Braverman lives in San Francisco with her husband, biologist Alan Goldstein.

Read The SF Gate review

Read the Library Journal starred review.

Read the Booklist review

Read an excerpt