Potemkin village

A planetary diplomatic council sends a small delegation—a recording photographer, a writer, and a married couple—to visit an isolated island state founded by adherents of Tolstoyan philosophy who were expelled centuries earlier. The mission must assess the state's request to colonize nearby uninhabited islands and investigate puzzling incidents: occasional castaways who reported staying voluntarily, followed in later years by preserved corpses returned with apparent suicides and carefully staged funerary treatment. The narrative follows the delegation’s inquiry through maps, records, and first-hand observation as it probes themes of secrecy, cultural persistence, and the ambiguity of humanitarian appearances.