The world is round

After years of dreaming of the countries beyond Czechoslovakia, Jitka crawls under a barbed-wire fence to freedom in Italy. She then finds herself in another kind of limbo, waiting for a visa in a refugee camp set incongruously among picturesque Austrian grape fields. Jitka is soon initiated into the mysteries of camp life - from the dangerous but seductive Hilton, home of the camp's single men, who outnumber the single women by almost 1,800 to 17, to the art of making up a story good enough to get you asylum in Canada. Eventually, Jitka loses herself in the swirl of refugees from across the world who arrive and, mostly, never seem to leave. It is only when she is attacked by a group of dagger-carrying fake Albanians that she finally takes action. . A gripping portrait of camp life, The World Is Round has echoes of Beckett, but it is told with a humor and lightness unique to Iva Pekarkova.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Fiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.