Difetto

A single streetcar line runs around the sleepy square of an unnamed city. One day-out of nowhere-refugees pour from the streetcar and set up camp in the square. The residents grow hostile and eventually take extreme action.

Magdalena Tulli's novels include Moving Parts, Dreams and Stones,and In Red. Dreams and Stones won Poland's Koscielski Foundation Prize in 1995, and Moving Parts was shortlisted for the 2002 NIKE Prize. Tulli lives in Warsaw.

Bill Johnston is director of the Polish Studies Center at Indiana University. In 2005, he won an ASTEEL translation prize for Tulli's Dreams and Stones.