The Kafka Years

About the Book

It’s 1970s Washington, DC. The Cold War is still on. Benedicta Flynn, an editor and human rights activist, falls in love with a US intelligence agent. Months after he has abruptly broken off with her, there are signs of intruders in her house. A Czech razor blade, marked “TIGER,” is dropped in her handbag; her car is followed She thinks that these and other sinister incidents have occurred because she was involved with an American spy, and mingled with East European dissidents. No one, in or out of government, seems able to help her. The story moves to Australia, Brazil, Uruguay, France, England, and ends where it all began, in Washington, DC. Or does it?

About the Author

CARMEN VICKERS was born and grew up in India in the last years of the Raj. In her teens, she was sent to England to finish school, then worked for the BBC, before going on to drama school and working in theatre. In England, she married her American husband and came to the US with him and the first of their three sons. She worked sporadically in theatre and, over the years, for the Washington magazine, Diplomat; as a Washington correspondent for TransIndia, a weekly for Indians in the US; and as Director of Publications for a national Catholic organization. More recently, she started, Oyster, a small struggling quarterly, and is working on an autobiography, a children’s story set in 1930s India, and a play.