How We Are Translated

LONGLISTED FOR THE DESMOND ELLIOTT PRIZE
People say ‘I’m sorry’ all the time when it can mean both ‘I’m sorry I hurt you’ and ‘I’m sorry someone else did something I have nothing to do with’. It’s like the English language gave up on trying to find a word for sympathy which wasn’t also the word for guilt.
Swedish immigrant Kristin won’t talk about the Project growing inside her. Her Brazilian-born Scottish boyfriend Ciaran won’t speak English at all; he is trying to immerse himself in a Swedish
språkbad language bath,
to prepare for their future, whatever the fick that means. Their Edinburgh flat is starting to feel very small.
As this young couple is forced to confront the thing that they are both avoiding, they must reckon with the bigger questions of the world outside, and their places in it.

Reviews

‘Fans of Anne Carson and Maggie Nelson will like How We Are Translated. This is a beautiful book, both inside and out … a meditation on self: how a self is both lost and found in language and translation, and how a self is both lost and found in the body and all the body, especially the female body, can and can’t do.’