The Year Of Bad Maps

Kate Mancini, divorced mother and NGO worker is on trial for "assisting unlawful immigration" and a biro sketch of the Calais camp—dismissed by the judge as "the worst map in court history"—becomes both a symbol of her alleged crime and of the tangled paths that brought her there.

Kate's story moves between the claustrophobic present of her trial and the expansive past year of her travels. We follow her encounters by luck and chance: a tuk-tuk driver in Ho Chi Minh haunted by debt and war; a spoiled Indian youth in Tamil-Nadu who learns care for others; a witty hotel owner in Bangalore with artistic flair and a marriage she longs to escape; a young lotus-weaver in Myanmar still brimming with hope. Each voice refracts Kate differently—reckless, naïve, irritating, luminous—a complete mosaic of how one woman is seen and judged across borders, cultures, and crises.