LAND ACROSS, THE

An American writer of travel guides in need of a new location chooses to travel
to a small and obscure Eastern European country. The moment Grafton crosses the
border he is in trouble, much more than he could have imagined. His passport is
taken by guards, and then he is detained for not having it. He is released into
the custody of a family, but is again detained. It becomes evident that there ar
e supernatural agencies at work, but they are not in some ways as threatening as
the brute forces of bureaucracy and corruption in that country. Is our hero in
fact a spy for the CIA? Or is he an innocent citizen caught in a Kafkaesque trap
? Gene Wolfe keeps us guessing until the very end.