Anton's Leap

Part political thriller, part sex farce, Frank Gagliano’s novel ANTON’S LEAP is narrated by free-associating, sex-obsessed ballet star Anton Otchayanie. It’s 1982 and Anton wants to defect from Soviet Russia. But to do so, he’ll have to survive a train collision in Prague, join a traveling troupe of erotic jugglers, fall in love, screw a lot, create ballet and Commedia dell Arte scenarios, get sodomized with the nose of a Commedia dell Arte mask, find a super-strength serum, struggle to find an artistic persona, and develop compassion for other human beings: All this, while fleeing (in drag) from a Gay KGB agent and Anton’s own psychopathic twin brother Vahktang who, in a Kafkaesque horror scene, confronts Anton in a Prague Fun House. Richard Wagner’s testicles also play a role. For fans of picaresque flights of literary fancy like “Candide” or “Gulliver’s Travels,” and for devotees of unhinged surrealists like film director Federico Fellini, ANTON’S LEAP is a must-read tour-de-force.