CITIZEN ORLOV

In Payne’s farcical adventure set in central Europe, an unremarkable fishmonger is pulled into a complex political conspiracy.

While walking by a government building one cold day, Citizen Orlov notices the sound of a ringing telephone escaping an open ground-floor window. He’s not sure if the building is inhabited by the Ministry of Intelligence or the Ministry of Security. Still, he considers it his patriotic duty to answer the phone, and the voice on the other end gives him cryptic instructions to convey to an Agent Kosek. While trying to relay the communication, he’s mistaken for an agent himself, and no one seems interested in his insistence to the contrary. He’s sent to Kufzig, where the king is making a grand ceremonial visit. While there, Orlov is shot by an unknown assailant, then forced into a plot to assassinate the king by Agent Zelle, who’s taken Agent Kosek’s place and poses as an exotic dancer. Orlov is meant to detonate a bomb to create a diversion while Agent Zelle shoots the king; the plan is to blame the murder on the People’s Front, an opposition group run by Citizen Vanev, Orlov’s partner in the fishmonger business. The author satirically chronicles the peculiar ways in which Orlov, an apolitical man who naïvely trusts the government, is suddenly drawn into a web of political intrigue. At the same time, the work shows how Orlov is thrust into a moral dilemma, as Agent Zelle orders him to spy on Vanev, his friend of many years, and threatens to harm Orlov’s mother if he refuses. In addition to humor—which is, by turns, silly and insightful—Payne provides an intelligent examination of the bureaucratic maze of modern tyranny. Moreover, Orlov’s political transformation is portrayed deftly and plausibly as he becomes a person with political passion and a chance to make a difference. Overall, this is a very funny novel in the mold of Vladimir Nabokov’s Invitation to a Beheading, and it’s as entertaining as it is astute.

A sharp comic novel that unpacks the evils of authoritarianism.