This Place That Place

DEBUTFrom an author specializing in the role of theater in understanding conflict, this debut novel has a highly unusual structure: all characters are unnamed, and the names of places are generic. For example, This Place has long been occupied by That Place, and the two countries can stand in for any places past or present, where a stronger power holds military control over a weaker one. During a period of curfew, a woman from That Place is embedded with a family in This Place and is developing a curriculum to be used to deprogram That Place’s soldiers. The novel consists of stream-of-consciousness dialogue between the woman and the man whose family she is staying with, the woman’s curriculum and the man’s commentary on it, and the explanations of the elaborate coping system developed by the man who has lived most of his life under occupation. The two central characters try to achieve mutual understanding despite the different ideologies and circumstances under which they were raised, struggling with how to express themselves without offense and fighting against their growing mutual attraction.