How We Are Translated

LONGLISTED FOR THE DESMOND ELLIOTT PRIZE
Do you ever feel like you’re not speaking the same language?
Swedish immigrant Kristin won’t talk about her pregnancy. Her Brazilian-born Scottish boyfriend Ciaran won’t speak English at all; he is trying to immerse himself in a språkbad or ‘language bath’, covering their Edinburgh apartment in post-it notes to teach himself Swedish.
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.’