Where should I begin? After all, you have never been there; or if you have, you may not have understood the significance of what you saw, or thought you saw. A window is a window, but there is looking out and looking in. The native you glimpsed, disappearing behind the curtain, or into the bushes, or down the manhole in the main street, may have been only your reflection in the glass. My country specializes in such illusions.

Margaret Atwood, Good Bones and Simple Murders (1994)