Borders are disappearing, being wiped away by the tides of history. Petra, Anka, Mika, Natália and Juliana—their parents lived entrenched behind the Iron Curtain, but they can travel and traverse the world. What will they make of these limitless possibilities?
In The Moon in Foil, Paris, London, Helsinki and Budapest serve as backdrops to the stories of post-communist emigrants. They discover that exploring the world can be dull and exhausting. In desperation, they try to build new routines and craft fresh identities. They can always call home, or go back. But they stay, to become anonymous entities amid the urban sprawl. They deal with sublet apartments, degrading jobs and crumbling relationships. They can put everything off indefinitely and permanently remain students. Or they can move to another place and do it all over again.
Zuska Kepplová’s novel is a millennials’ odyssey—a search for the self by the post–Cold War generation.