cover image Steps Under Water

Steps Under Water

Alicia Kozameh. University of California Press, $24.95 (161pp) ISBN 978-0-520-20388-4

In September 1975, six months before the fall of Isabel Peron, Kozameh became yet another Argentinean political prisoner. Here, she translates her 39-month ordeal (and the subsequent two years of ""freedom under surveillance"") into a novel that, though uneven at times, effectively brings the reader into a nightmarish world of incarceration and fear. The author's alias is named Sara, a young woman who is arrested and whose lover, Hugo, disappears. After a brutal stint in prison, she tries to reclaim her life, but the memories of her time in prison continue to haunt her. Then Hugo reappears in prison, and Sara struggles to negotiate her relationship with him and with Marco, a married man. Underlying all this is the possibility of another arrest and incarceration. Kozameh is at her best depicting the horrors of prison life and the sisterhood that develops through the prisoners' daily struggle. Outside the prison, Sara and the other characters are more wooden--perhaps because their imprisonment has left them emotionally stunted in the face of a mundane world. In an epigraph, the author writes: ""The substance of the story, or every episode, is real; it happened."" That is quite a burden for any author, but Kozameh has produced a book that succeeds both as fiction and as testimony. (Nov.)