The Leto Bundle Book

Leto, the endlessly fleeing heroine of Marina Warner's new novel The Leto Bundle is the mother of twins born without a navel. She is a minor Greek goddess, or a Christian martyr, or the heroine of a mediaeval romance; she is a castaway ambiguously rescued by a travelling scholar and a refugee caught in the chaos of the Balkans. She is also a bundle of manuscript scraps and jewels and carvings that was for a while mistaken for a mummy--and becomes the obsession of a charismatic young political leader, a fading pop star and a feminist scholar. This is a startling and impressive novel about documentation and identity--Leto is who the documents say she is, just as we all are. Kim, an adopted war orphan, is keen to assert a new Britishness that takes its roots from the here and now, rather than from a history that is itself a product of ideologies. This novel draws together many of the obsessions of Marina Warner's work on fairy-tale; it is a search for lost parents and children and a vehement protest against inhumanity which asserts the role of the poetic in a struggle for human rights that too often relies on reason alone. --Roz Kaveney Read More