Internationals, The (2004 Longlisted For Orange Prize)

Description:
'The Internationals clambered warily out of the plane. Many of the men and women emerging under the Republic's spring skies were in charge of budgets totalling more than the country's GNP...' Set in a Macedonian refugee camp during the 1999 Kosovo crisis, Sarah May's brilliantly satirical novel spans seventy-eight tense days from the commencement of NATO air strikes on Yugoslavia to the withdrawal of Serb forces from Northern Kosovo. As the spotlight of the world's media is turned on a small, landlocked country struggling to turn itself into a capitalist state, an extraordinary cast of aid workers and diplomats finds itself becoming inextricably involved with refugees, advertising executives and an Albanian mayor in ways none of them expected. The weeks pass, temperatures soar and, gradually, the Internationals jettison more and more of the certainties they came with, until the only certainty they're left with is that no form of contraception exists against corruption - least of all purity of motive.

Author Biography:
Having left her job after they discovered that she had written The Nudist Colony under her desk, Sarah May is now a full-time writer. She lives in Blackheath, London with her husband, Benjamin May, and their son. Benjamin is a theatre director who has been working in Kosovo and Macedonia, helping young people to rebuild their war-torn lives by making theatre. Sarah recently accompanied him to Macedonia for several months. She is 29 years old.