[In the following review, Pei surveys the major themes of Continent.]

The book's epigraph reads, “There and beyond is a seventh continent. … And its business is trade and superstition”; seven pieces of fiction taking place on this nonexistent land mass make up the book. These short narratives, four in the first person and three in the third, have no characters or events in common. What nevertheless holds the book together and gives satisfaction is, as the title suggests, a place, not so much geographical as historical and psychic—the extracted essence of a part of the world. It is situation, rather than characters or plot, that we become involved with as we read.

The time is the present; the rest of the world is apparently the world we know. Crace's nameless continent communicates with the others, but it lies at the world's outskirts; it is made up of what we call “developing countries,” places leaving behind a traditional culture (“superstition”) and rushing to embrace, or being dragged toward, Western science and international capitalism. The stories could take place in Africa, or South America, or the Caribbean, and such stories as these—about being imprisoned without cause (“The World with One Eye Shut”), or seeing a traditional art form lose all meaning and become a commodity for foreign collectors (“Sins and Virtues”), or bringing disaster upon oneself in the hurry to make “improvements” (“Electricity”)—are taking place at this moment. But Continent is not anthropology, sociology, or journalism; rather than analyzing or reporting a part of the world, Continent typifies it in an art work.

The world of Continent is by turns tragic and comic—sometimes both at once, as in “Electricity.” The threat of death is never far away, and often at the forefront of awareness. The voice of the book—and no matter who is narrating, the stories possess a consistent voice—seems to be determined by that threat. It is an authoritative voice; its archaic-sounding definitiveness is the antithesis of post-modern self-consciousness and contributes as much as geography to the feeling that we are in an alternate reality.

The second story in the book, “The World with One Eye Shut,” is narrated by a prisoner—rounded up by the army for no understandable reason—who can just barely glimpse the outside world from his cell. In the thin slice of the outer reality that he can see, the narrator watches the gate of the compound, hoping against hope that his half-witted sister, enamored of a soldier, will somehow rescue him.

I know when work is done: the raffia screen comes down again … the army chauffeurs button their coats and start the engines of the government cars, and the soldiers at the wire gate push back the women waiting there. There is the woman with the head scarf. She comes at lunchtime and stands immobile with an unfurled portrait of a man. There are the white-haired women in the black clothes who have the energy of peddlers, blocking the way of every man who exits, holding up their lists. There is the fat girl with the flag, the tall woman with three children, the bandy one, the girl with short hair, the stocky woman who bangs on the hoods of passing cars. There is the pulse of flame from their charcoal brazier at night.

This is, in a sense, the point of view of Continent as a whole: in most of the book, someone looks out from an uncompromising situation with a vision sharpened by extremity and therefore capable of penetrating to the essence. The voice that this situation gives rise to is one driven to truthfulness, precision, and a conscientious subduing of its passions. (The one exception to the latter is the final story, in which the isolated agent of a mining company goes mad; it is the only story in the book that feels forced.) Though most of the characters in Continent are better off than the prisoner watching the gate, we constantly hear voices like his no matter what the circumstances, and these voices have the power to fascinate, to make us listen to news that may not be good. We need to listen.