Zoe

Ler, a married father of a young daughter, Maja, and curator of a gallery in the city of Mimosa, receives an assignment from the Minister of Culture to purchase the portrait "Girl with a Doll" by the painter Valdemar Udini, a key piece of national heritage, at an auction in New York. He travels by plane via Athens to Megapolis, experiencing the shock of the contrast between provincial life and the chaotic city.

At the auction, with the help of the consulate, he buys the painting for $1,200, but is confronted by Princess Zoe Kudelin, an exiled member of a deposed royal dynasty, born in 1938 - the same day as Ler. Zoe, a cosmopolitan woman in exile, lives in Greenwich Village, dealing in promotions and fashion to survive. She claims that the portrait is her boyish self, painted by Udini. The two begin a passionate romance: walks in Central Park, dinners at the "Russian Tea Room", visits to museums such as the Guggenheim, and exploring the Kosilian community in the Bronx, at the "Mimosa" tavern. Ler moves in with her, changing his habits, while facing offers from rich collectors and traces of the past.

Zoe bears the burden of exile: the death of her father, King Nicholas IV, at the Savoy Hotel, and only has a button from his shirt as an inheritance. The novel explores the themes of totalitarian repression (censorship, paranoia, prohibition of escape), exile and nostalgia for a lost home, the identity of a small nation in world chaos (Kozilia as a "non-existent" island), art as resistance and a bridge to the roots, and love between the past and the present - a modern fairy tale about a shepherd and a princess. Through satirical descriptions, introspective monologues and vivid urban scenes, Kapor shows the contrast of tradition and modernity, the poverty of emigrants and false splendor, eroticism and loneliness, reminding us that exile is not only a geographical, but also a mental phenomenon.