The Internationals

'May is a compassionate writer and her ability to capture the contradictions of humanity under duress make this a highly readable and engaging novel' Big Issue '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.