2 tablespoons salt, or to taste

Wangron Konyak, 23, drove five hours on his motorcycle from the village of Momkho to pick up his sister as school closed for vacation. “If we are not allowed to come this side then we will suffer a lot. For those studying in Myanmar school it will be alright, but people like my sister who study in India will be very affected.”Wangron Konyak, 23, from Momkho village I Myanmar, prepares to start his bike in Longwa village, on the India Myanmar border in the northeastern India state of Nagaland, Friday, Dec.13, 2024. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath)

Wangron Konyak, 23, from Momkho village I Myanmar, prepares to start his bike in Longwa village, on the India Myanmar border in the northeastern India state of Nagaland, Friday, Dec.13, 2024. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath)Residents and state officials are rejecting the changes.The Nagaland state government passed a resolution opposing the end of the Free Movement Regime and plans for border fencing, and on Feb. 3 Longwa residents staged a protest carrying placards with slogans like “Respect Indigenous rights, not colonial legacy!”

Yhome, the expert, said that an effort to stop locals from crossing the border could violate the U.N. Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People, which seeks to protect the integrity of border-straddling communities.“For us there is no Burma Longwa or India Longwa,” Yanlang, a 45-year-old village council member said. “How can one village and one family be divided?” he asked.

Konyak Naga women carry baskets filled with firewoods on their backs and walk past a concrete structure marking the India-Myanmar border at Longwa village, in the northeastern Indian state of Nagaland, Friday, Dec.13, 2024. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath)

Konyak Naga women carry baskets filled with firewoods on their backs and walk past a concrete structure marking the India-Myanmar border at Longwa village, in the northeastern Indian state of Nagaland, Friday, Dec.13, 2024. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath)exploits all the tension and ambiguity inherent in that opening scene to craft a short, propulsive novel that suggests that at work and in life, we are constantly trying out roles and making it up as we go along. Or, to quote

, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”“Audition” features an unnamed female narrator, an actor of some renown, in rehearsals for a difficult new play. When she is not on stage, she lives a quiet life in the West Village with her art historian husband, Tomas. Halfway through the novel, everything changes. The relationships between her, Xavier and Tomas are turned upside down in head-spinning fashion like the figure/ground illusion known as Rubin’s vase. Look at the picture one way, and it is a container for flowers; look at it another way, and it is the silhouettes of two heads facing each other.

Kitamura’s two previous novels also featured unnamed female protagonists whose work was bound up with interpretation: in “Intimacies,” a female interpreter at the Hague, and in “A Separation,” a translator. In this book she evokes a stylish city built out of glass, a sort of Mastercard ad where people have personal assistants and nibble on charcuterie trays in tastefully furnished apartments.In this facsimile of New York, which does not include disheveled people sleeping on the street or garbage spilling out of trash cans, Kitamura does a good job of creating a sense of the uncanny and feeling of dread. Reality is unstable; nothing is as it seems.