Four thematically linked novellas that focus on obsessive relationships stolen identities and
illusions of grandeur in the post-1989 Carpathian-Balkan region: An American expat in Europe
appropriates the identity of a Romanian orphan in her desperate search for love. A dictator's
daughter learns while on a study trip to France that her parents have been overthrown and are
about to be executed. A minor character from a novel confronts her own insignificance. A wife
announces to her husband of forty years that she's just been awarded the Nobel Prize in
Literature.
