After spending his childhood & school years in Albania imagining that the mini-skirts & quiz-shows of Italian state TV were the reality of life in the West & fantasizing accordingly about living on the other side of the border the death of Hoxha at last enables Gazmend Kapllani to make his escape. However on arriving in the Promised Land he finds neither lots of willing leggy lovelies nor a warm welcome from his long-lost Greek cousins. Instead he gets banged up in a detention centre in a small border town. As Gazi & his fellow immigrants try to find jobs they begin to plan their future lives in Greece imagining riches & successes which always remain just beyond their grasp. The sheer absurdity of both their plans & their new lives is overwhelming. Both detached & involved ironic & emotional Kapllani interweaves the story of his experience with meditations upon border syndrome
- a mental state as much as a geographical experience
- to create a brilliantly observed amusing & perceptive debut.