Staff Pick
Misinterpretation
by Ledia Xhoga
AUCK IN STOCK
WGTN IN STOCK
Pages:
328
Published:
1 Jun 2025
Format
Paperback
Publisher
Daunt Books
ISBN:
9781917092180
There was a unicycle hanging from a metal rack, its lemon-coloured wheel hovering above my head. The last thing I remembered was that party in Manhattan, somewhere in the West Village, drinking odd-looking cocktails and eating walnut cookies . . . Everything seemed vague.
In New York City, an Albanian interpreter cannot help but become entangled in her clients' struggles, despite her husband's cautions. When she reluctantly agrees to work with Alfred, a Kosovar torture survivor, during his therapy sessions, his nightmares stir up her own buried memories; while an impulsive attempt to help a Kurdish poet leads to a risky encounter and a reckless plan.
As ill-fated decisions stack up, jeopardising the nameless narrator's marriage and mental health, she takes a spontaneous trip to reunite with her mother in Albania, where her life in the United States is put into stark relief. When she returns to face the consequences of her actions, she must question what is real and what is not.
Ruminative and propulsive, Misinterpretation interrogates the darker legacies of family and country, and the boundary between compassion and self-preservation.
$28.00
How can we communicate some of our deepest, most nuanced feelings for others to understand? This narrator, an Albanian translator in New York, grapples with that question; both for her clients, and within her own marriage. Xhoga's exploration of the promise and perils of interpretation is told alongside gripping developments in one's personal relationship to family and country. sensitive and complex!
Mrittika, Unity Books wellington
