NATIONAL BESTSELLER * NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY WALL STREET JOURNAL, ELLE, TOWN & COUNTRY, ELECTRIC LITERATURE, LIBRARY JOURNAL, CRIMEREADS, DOCUMENT JOURNAL, AND WORDS WITHOUT BORDERS * NAMED A MUST READ BY NPR, PEOPLE, VANITY FAIR, NYLON, ALTA JOURNAL, AND DEBUTIFUL
International Booker Prize-winning translator and Women's Prize finalist Jennifer Croft's madly brilliant mystery novel of interconnection, transformation, and translation in Europe's last great wilderness.
Savvy, sly, and hard to classify. A bacchanal. -New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice)
Fiercely inventive. -Washington Post
Knives Out on mushrooms. -Elle
Surprised me at every turn. -NPR.org
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, Grey 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 Irena's 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 the Author's that they are utterly unprepared for. Forced to face their differences as they grow increasingly paranoid in a 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.
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.
