Duplicity

Duplicity is one of the most common themes in the novel, and is expressed with some frequency that the narrator himself begins to come into question in the reader’s mind as a reliable source of information. Altan uses duplicity as a means to create a sense of unbalance in the reader, and by calling attention to explicit uses of duplicity challenges the reader to look for it in places where it may not initially be so obvious. In this way the novel itself adopts the theme of duplicity and becomes a meta-literary device to question the limits of literature and reality and this link to another theme, that of reality and fantasy.

Duplicity is prominent nearly from the beginning of the novel when the narrator first arrives in the town. He describes the town idyllically with its “vineyards and olive groves”, “wisteria cascading”, and “red...