"This book could not have been written by anyone other than Jennifer Croft, a veteran translator with a tremendous capacity for language and storytelling. When eight translators convene for a summit with their revered author Irena Rey, they have no idea they are embarking on a psychological thrillride that will destabilize not only their long-standing relationships with one another, but their entire sense of self and history. With conflicting voices that twist and tangle like vines, the characters in this novel are intertwined inseparably from one another. A smart, pensive exploration of the creative process, The Extinction of Irena Rey will transform your understanding of authorship, translation, and the sticky web cast between them."
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication Date 2024-03-05
Section New Hardcover - Fiction / All Staff Suggestions / Fiction Suggestions / Melissa S.
Format Hardccover
ISBN 9781639731701
From the International Booker Prize-winning translator and Women's Prize finalist, an utterly beguiling novel about eight translators and their search for a world-renowned author who goes missing in a primeval Polish forest.
Eight translators arrive at a house in a primeval Polish forest on the border of Belarus. It belongs to the world-renowned author Irena Rey, and they are there to translate her magnum opus, Gray Eminence. But within days of their arrival, Irena disappears without a trace.
The translators, who hail from eight different countries but share the same reverence for their beloved author, begin to investigate where she may have gone while proceeding with work on her masterpiece. They explore this ancient wooded refuge with its intoxicating slime molds and lichens and study her exotic belongings and layered texts for clues. But doing so reveals secrets—and deceptions—of Irena Rey's that they are utterly unprepared for. Forced to face their differences as they grow increasingly paranoid in this fever dream of isolation and obsession, soon the translators are tangled up in a web of rivalries and desire, threatening not only their work but the fate of their beloved author herself.
This hilarious, thought-provoking debut novel is a brilliant examination of art, celebrity, the natural world, and the power of language. It is an unforgettable, unputdownable adventure with a small but global cast of characters shaken by the shocks of love, destruction, and creation in one of Europe’s last great wildernesses.
