Published by Scribe, 2024, 309 pages.

“It was our seventh pilgrimage to the village at the edge of the primeval forest where she lived. … She loved that forest as much as we loved her books, which, without a fraction of a second’s hesitation, we would have laid down our lives to defend. We treated her every word as sacred, even though our whole task was to replace her every word.”

Eight translators are summoned by their author, Irena Rey, to her home in Poland near the Białowieża Forest. She has finished her masterpiece, and it is time to have it translated.

The translators—Slovenian, Serbian, Spanish, French, English, German, Ukrainian and Swedish—have been convened like this since 2007, although Swedish is a newcomer. (Instead of names, they refer to each other by their language.) Irena wants to give them the manuscript before they read any reviews, so they gather at her house and all of them work on translating the book at the same time. They have a routine, set by Irena, which is unvarying.

Except that this time, something has changed. Irena looks ghostly pale and thin, the amulet she always wore around her neck is missing, and so is her devoted husband Bogdan. And there does not seem to be a manuscript. At the meeting where the manuscript is supposed to be handed to them, Irena talks about Białowieża Forest instead, about how its spruce trees are being cut down and how the death of one species could lead to the destruction of the entire forest.

Then Irena disappears. The translators cannot understand it. She is their Author (she is the only Polish author they are allowed to translate), they adore her and she trusts them implicitly—they know “her every thought, every move, her every conscious desire”—so how could she leave without telling them? Or was she kidnapped?

Her absence leaves the translators rudderless, and the cult around Irena—because that is what it is—starts to crack. Irena’s dictates, once followed slavishly, are disobeyed. Swedish, being a newcomer, is relatively unimpressed by her rules. He is the first to start using real names for the translators. Once that happens, the groupthink starts to dissipate. English (Alexis) tends to question Irena’s directives, driving Spanish (Emilia or Emi) to distraction because Emi is a true believer, insisting on sticking to Irena’s rules even in her absence. Emi’s dislike of Alexis grows until paranoia sets in.

But where is Irena? As the translators start digging, looking for clues, they learn that, far from being Irena’s confidants, she only told them what they needed to know. She kept important things from them, and made up some of the stories that she did share. And from then on, things start to fall apart.

Jennifer Croft uses her experience as a translator[1] to deliver this complex plot about language, translation and interpretation, our place in nature, and the cult of celebrity.

The book is narrated by Emi, who is not a reliable narrator. As the events unfold, she realizes that the people she thought she knew well had kept secrets from her, including the woman she considers her best friend, French (Chloe). (How can you call your best friend by a language instead of a name? What does that say about the relationship?) It is clear from what Emi is telling us that Irena is manipulative and dictatorial, but Emi doesn’t see it. Somehow, Irena’s economy with the truth seems to be a bigger betrayal in Emi’s case because she believes so blindly.

There are layers of interpretation here. It is not just a question of what people choose to reveal or conceal, and the dangers of misinterpreting their intentions (as Emi often does). It is also the book, which is written by Emi, a Spanish speaker, in Polish, translated by Alexis into English. So what we are reading is Alexis’s translation of Emi’s book. It is not just a question of the layers of languages but also an unreliable narrator translated by someone who was involved in the events described, so not exactly a dispassionate observer. And Alexis does not do a straightforward translation: she edits and corrects Emi’s text, and even changes the title of the book. Her translation is peppered with footnotes explaining her changes, adding information, providing an alternative view of the events, or making caustic remarks, creating a sort of sub-narrative. (I loved these footnotes—they had me laughing out loud.) But given all these layers, how much of the truth do we get?

The other theme that runs through the book is Białowieża itself, a primeval forest that is so interconnected that it feels like a single entity. It is now under threat. The spruce trees are ostensibly being cut down to protect them from the spruce bark beetles that are destroying them, but Irena is unconvinced. She feels strongly about the forest, and the translators take it upon themselves to help stop its destruction.[2]

The trees in the forest survive partly due to fungi that help deliver nutrients to the trees while living off them. Fungi keep coming up throughout the book—in the gifts that Irena gives the translators, and a risotto that they ate the night that Irena disappeared. Fungi have something in common with translators, Croft implies, with their networks and connections, living off a host in order to create something new. If the translator does their job well, they should be invisible—but what they are doing is, effectively, creating another book from the original.

“We had always been connected to each other by fine, feeling filaments that had no origin, and we had no stable hierarchies or particular ambitions beyond translating her work”, says Emi. “It was as though we were a single organism—Irena’s entourage—whose sole purpose was to conquer eight new realms in her name.”

This is an unusual and thought-provoking novel, one that I thoroughly enjoyed for its complexity and humour, especially as someone who loves language. A real triumph.

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[1] Croft is a prize-winning translator. She translates works from Spanish, Ukrainian and Polish, including ones by Olga Tokarczuk.

[2] Irena was right: the trees were being cut down for timber. There was a huge public outcry which led to a cessation of the logging. See https://www.wwf.eu/what_we_do/forests/saving_biaowiea_forest/. Also, see my review of Nick Hunt’s book, Outlandish.