This modernized version of Gogol's The Inspector General
, planted in a contemporary office, reveals the weaknesses inherent in human communities everywhere. Clark works in a remote branch of the U.S. Embassy, in an unnamed Eastern European city. The office is thrown into a panic of preparation upon learning that the ambassador will be visiting at the end of the week. Clark discovers simultaneously that a group of refugees is living in the basement of the building, fleeing potential attack by roving bands of racist hoodlums. Upon running a minor errand for one of the refugees, Clark discovers that, as feared, her home has been ransacked. Then he learns that the refugees will have to be evicted before the ambassador's visit. Clark is a strange hero, whose obsessive inner monologues fill the book; prone to impotent brooding on injustices to himself and others, he manages to speak his mind when the refugees are threatened—but then the arrival of the ambassador renders earlier events somewhat meaningless. The Kafka-like story moves along at a very rapid pace, but not so quickly that we are unable to appreciate the vacillation of the narrator, the pettiness of his superior or the sad plight of the refugees. Landor breaks little fresh ground, and his narrator can be gratingly self-righteous, but this is a worthy fable for our times. (Feb.)
