How We Are Translated

A Novel
Jessica Gaitán Johannesson

“One of the gentlest and most patient, humane, and quirky things I have read in a long time…Hugely original.”

Niamh Campbell, author of This Happy

“How We Are Translated is a layered work about home, language, barriers, and belonging. Johannesson’s unusual and refreshing prose crackles with truth—burning along beautifully.”

Alice Bishop, author of A Constant Hum

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“Our bodies and languages are made new to us again through Jessica Gaitán Johannesson’s wild and playful novel. Laying bare the absurdity of the idea of a common tongue, she takes us on an adventure through private and public languages—those which ebb and flow between lovers or arise out of necessity in a workplace obsessed with authenticity. How We Are Translated gets at the heart of how language holds us, tears at us, and can bring us close in spite of, or because of, its inevitable imperfections.”

Saskia Vogel, author of Permission

“With echoes of Ali Smith and George Saunders, How We Are Translated explores themes of identity and intimacy with admirable sensitivity and wit.”

Julianne Pachico, author of The Anthill

“These lyrical essays by bookseller Johannesson (How We Are Translated) contemplate the consequences of impending climate collapse … Johannesson’s prose has a quiet, entrancing pull, and she cleverly structures her pieces to highlight unexpected connections, driving home her vision of interconnectedness. Understated and moving, this ruminative outing resonates.”

Publishers Weekly

“A novel brimming with ideas and promise.”

The Sunday Times

“Johannesson's tender and madcap debut explores themes of family, history, and language [with] a spiritedness reminiscent of the work of Elizabeth McKenzie … a delightful romp."

Publishers Weekly

"Concepts of ethnicity, intimacy, and identity are woven into Jessica Gaitán Johannesson’s quirky, contemplative novel … Poignant, perceptive, and clever, How We Are Translated is a novel about the human beings who exist beyond ideals of diversity, and about the emotional implications of language."

Foreword, starred review

“How We Are Translated is a gentle and meditative look at relationships—romantic, cultural, familial. Gaitán Johannesson creates a soft world populated by simultaneously mundane and quirky characters. This is a tender story handled with soft, deft hands.”

Laura Graveline, Brazos Bookstore

“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.”

Samantha, Bear Pond Books

“How We Are Translated is the most contemporary of novels; set somehow both in the now and in the distant past; in one city that could be many cities, and in two different languages, though also in defiance of language, with as much focus on the silences between words as the words themselves. It’s a novel that maintains just the right balance of oddity, intimacy and illumination. It’s a novel that anyone interested in the future of the English novel needs to read!”

Sara Baume, author of Spill Simmer Falter Wither

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.

“One of the gentlest and most patient, humane, and quirky things I have read in a long time…Hugely original.”

Niamh Campbell, author of This Happy

“How We Are Translated is a layered work about home, language, barriers, and belonging. Johannesson’s unusual and refreshing prose crackles with truth—burning along beautifully.”

Alice Bishop, author of A Constant Hum

View all reviews

Saskia Vogel, author of Permission

“With echoes of Ali Smith and George Saunders, How We Are Translated explores themes of identity and intimacy with admirable sensitivity and wit.”

Julianne Pachico, author of The Anthill

Publishers Weekly

“A novel brimming with ideas and promise.”

The Sunday Times

“Johannesson's tender and madcap debut explores themes of family, history, and language [with] a spiritedness reminiscent of the work of Elizabeth McKenzie … a delightful romp."

Publishers Weekly

Foreword, starred review

Laura Graveline, Brazos Bookstore

Samantha, Bear Pond Books

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Details

Format:Paperback

Size: 5.1in × 7.8in

Extent:240pp

ISBN (13):9781950354825

RRP:$16.00

Pub date:31 Jan 2022

High-res cover:Download Image

AWARDS

2022 Australian Book Design Awards for Best Designed Literary Fiction Cover - Short-listed 2021 Desmond Elliott Prize - Long-listed

CATEGORIES / tags

AUTHOR

Jessica Gaitán Johannesson

Jessica Gaitán Johannesson grew up between Sweden, Colombia, and Ecuador. She’s a bookseller and an activist working for climate justice, and lives in Edinburgh. Her first novel, How We Are Translated, was longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize.