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In present-day New York City, an Albanian interpreter reluctantly agrees to work with Alfred, a Kosovar torture survivor, during his therapy sessions.
Despite her husband's cautions, she soon becomes entangled in her clients' struggles: Alfred's nightmares stir up her own buried memories, and an impulsive attempt to help a Kurdish poet leads to a risky encounter and a reckless plan.
As ill-fated decisions stack up, jeopardizing 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, Ledia Xhoga's debut novel, Misinterpretation, interrogates the darker legacies of family and country, and the boundary between compassion and self-preservation.
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...ra The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller Endling by Maria Reva Flesh by David Szalay Seascraper by Benjamin Wood Misinterpretation by Ledia Xhoga BookBrowse has reviewed four so far: https://www.bookbrowse.com/reviews/index.cfm/book_number/4965/universality BookBrowse.com https://www.bookbrowse...
-kim.kovacs
"Thrilling... . This debut novel explores the ways traumas of the past can impact how we experience the present." ―Kirkus Reviews
"An absolutely gorgeous novel, taut as a thriller, lovely as a watercolor, poetically incisive and wry. I devoured this book and was heartbroken when it was over. Ledia Xhoga is a great and visionary writer whose career I will follow eagerly in decades to come." ―Jennifer Croft, author of The Extinction of Irena Rey
"Ledia Xhoga is a superb chronicler of post-national existence, of a narrator shifting between disparate views of reality depending on what language she's speaking and with whom. Deft and insightful, Misinterpretation reveals the disorienting process of making choices in one language and then questioning them in another. This is a moving, exceptional first novel." ―Idra Novey, author of Take What You Need
This information about Misinterpretation was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Ledia Xhoga is an Albanian American fiction writer and playwright. Before getting an MFA in fiction from Texas State University, she worked in publishing in New York City. She has been published in Intrepid Times, Hobart, KGB magazine, and other journals. Originally from Tirana, Albania, she lives with her family in Brooklyn and the Catskills.
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