Mountain Country

The mountain country is the primary setting for the novel. The narrator's employer has established this "elite research community on a minor mountain at the Italian-French border" (6). When the narrator first learns about the mountain country online, she reads that its objective is "to bioengineer food crops capable of withstanding smog, all discoveries to be shared with the Italian government" (6). Because the research the resident scientists perform is funded by private investors, the community does not have a positive relationship with the Italian citizens or its members of parliament. Although she reads about these tensions on the internet, she does not fully understand their political significance when she arrives at the mountain. Indeed, the narrator accepts a chef job here when she is 29 without even knowing the country's name. She does so as a way to escape her life in the present and to survive the world's...