How We Are Translated: a novel

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 sprakbad 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.