The Sinistra Zone

When Andrei, a wayfarer and "simple harvester of fruit," arrives in the Ukrainian border town of Dobrin in search of his runaway adopted son he becomes entangled in the bizarre social and political world of the isolated village. Dobrin borders the Sinistra military zone (a pun on "sinister" and the real breakaway territory of Transnistria) where Andrei's son supposedly lives, and Bodor captures the cold realities of this totalitarian state in which each resident fulfills an assigned duty and is subject to the zone commander's whims. The security of Andrei's tenure in the village is threatened when his benefactor, the kind Colonel Borcan, who allowed Andrei to stay without identity papers, dies and is replaced by the ruthless Izolda Mavrodin. She quickly forms a citizen police, "the grey ganders", to monitor locals' behavior and threatens to banish Andrei for whom she sees no purpose in the zone. While Bodor's writing is rich with descriptions of unique characters%E2%80%94from a pair of albino twins to a jovial Turkish trucker unafraid of Mavrodin's threats%E2%80%94the narrative lacks urgency and the myriad peculiar characters distract from Andrei's mission to find his son. (June)