The anonymous European City, post-Brexit.

Nearly all of Kudos is set in different locations around an unnamed European city, which is very hot in the summertime and possesses a Mediterranean climate, suggesting it is a metropolis in Europe’s south. The names of the characters who Faye encounters there—Luis, Paola, etc.—suggest that the city might be in Portugal or Spain. Similarly, there are very few clues for the reader to infer a time frame. The presence of technology that characters reference, from GPS units to smart watches, suggests that the novel takes place in the contemporary world. And, one of Faye’s interviewer’s allusion to the British desire to leave the European union suggests that Kudos takes place in a post-Brexit Europe, after the referendum passed in June of 2016.

It’s significant that there are so few clues as to the time and place the novel...