Mona is a Peruvian writer based on a Californian campus, open-eyed & sardonic, a connoisseur of marijuana & prescription pills. In the humanities she has discovered she is something of an anthropological curiosity - a female writer of colour treasured for the flourish of rarefied diversity that reflects so well upon her department. When she is nominated for 'the most important literary award in Europe', Mona sees a chance to escape her sunlit substance abuse & erotic distraction, & leaves for a small village in Sweden. Now she is stuck in the company of her competitors, who arrive from Japan, France, Armenia, Iran & Colombia. The writers do what writers do: exchange flattery, nurse envy & private resentments, stab rivals in the back & go to bed together. But all the while, Mona keeps stumbling across traces of violence on her body, the origins of which she can't - or won't - remember.