Jan Drabek

Turmoilin Jan Drabek

Turmoilin is a satire on many levels - it deals with the post-Communist world, Africa, diplomacy, but above all with human relationships. A North American umbrella salesman with Czech roots returns to Prague to teach English at the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs and finds himself appointed Ambassador of the Czech Republic to an African country called Turmoilin. Accompanying him to his new post is his glib wife Ginny, who helps him out of numerous scrapes. Along the way, our hero must deal with many problems, such as his inability to grasp the fundamentals of the secret code and the strange ways of his mysterious neighbors. Among the characters he meets are the outspoken hard-line conservative black U. S. ambassador to Turmoilin and a senile papal nuncio who keeps mistaking him for a Romanian soil erosion expert. Amongst problems he also must deal with is the separation of his country into The Czech Republic and Slovakia; also with his first secretary who causes a diplomatic incident by copulating in the tall grass of another embassy.