Continent (novel)

Translations have subsequently divided between providing a title incorporating that gloss, as in the Dutch[2] and Italian,[3] and keeping to the original, as in the Portuguese,[4] Spanish,[5] Czech[6] and Serbian.

Crace admits to having been inspired by the approach of Magic realism when he started to write Continent but wanting to go beyond that to a closer criticism of social issues almost by stealth.

"[14] Because the places and societies in this continent are so vividly imagined, they serve as "an indirect, sometimes almost allegorical, reflection of reality that [Crace] achieves through dislocation".

Using the weapons of deliberate indirection and ambiguity of tone in this way allows the author, or his surrogate narrators, to satirise more convincingly what are standard villains anywhere: politicians hungry for power and profit; school teachers who use their position to spread a self-serving and conservative scepticism; the "mercantile instincts of supply and demand"[16] that are the target in "The Talking Skull" and "Sins and Virtues".

Though subsequent novels may have been more orthodox in form, ambiguity of location continues to such a degree that commentators commonly describe his creations as taking place in 'Craceland'.