Misinterpretation

by Ledia Xhoga

Overview

Longlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize

Winner of the 2024 New York City Book Award

Finalist for the 2024 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize

“Absolutely gorgeous. Taut as a thriller, lovely as a watercolor.”—Jennifer Croft

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781959030805
Publisher:	Tin House Books
Publication date:	09/03/2024
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

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.

Editorial Reviews

"Powerful and nuanced."

Electric Literature

"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

"If in the twenty-first century, Kafka had moved from Prague to Brooklyn, Misinterpretation is the novel I believe he would have written. Instead, Ledia Xhoga wrote it. She captures acorollary world to the one Josef K. inhabits in The Castle, but rather than not being able toreach the castle, Xhoga’s nameless protagonist finds herself living in the castle, a polyglotculture in which everyone misinterprets what everyone else says and does; some residentseven misinterpret their own emotions. Xhoga interprets our brave, new multicultural worldwith a sly, benign wit. Read her novel. You’ll be glad you did."

Tom Grimes

"Ledia Xhoga's novel about a woman whose life is on the brink of unraveling because of her good intentions explores the complexity of translating our own trauma, even to the people we love. With lyrical prose and a propulsive plot, Xhoga delves deep into the shadows of the human psyche, challenging readers to confront the darker legacies of the past while pondering the delicate balance between empathy and self-preservation. Ledia Xhoga has crafted a literary masterpiece that is as profound as it is unforgettable, solidifying her place as a talent to watch in the world of contemporary fiction."

Maisy Card

"Compassionate and well written, giving all of us a chance to consider how our histories impact the decisions we make today."

Book Page

"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

"Thrilling. . . . This debut novel explores the ways traumas of the past can impact how we experience the present."

Kirkus Reviews

"A nuanced exploration of communication failures, blurred boundaries and the emotional cost of unchecked altruism."

Observer (UK)

"An unnamed Albanian interpreter becomes enmeshed in the life of one of her clients, a Kosovar torture survivor, and reality begins to shift and blur."

A Most Anticipated Book of 2024 Lit Hub

"Misinterpretation lays bare the viscerality and muscle of language and words, their propensity to fly off the page, or off the lips, and act on our world."

Agni

"An exceptionally rich novel."

Full Stop

"Ledia Xhoga casts a riveting spell in this novel of an Albanian interpreter whose own shifting reality is as subject to misinterpretation as the words of her clients. A stunning debut."

Elizabeth Gaffney

2024-07-04
An interpreter living in Brooklyn throws herself into the lives of acquaintances to avoid confronting her own life.

The unnamed narrator, a woman from Albania, is married to Billy, an American professor of film. Billy asks his wife to focus on translation work while taking a break from interpreting, as interpreting seems to interfere with her ability to remain present. But she takes a job serving as an interpreter for Alfred, another Albanian immigrant, first for a dental visit and then for therapy to confront his demons from the war in Kosovo. The therapist fires her after the first session, for both identifying too closely with the client and getting lost in her own thoughts. From there, the narrator acts impulsively without considering the repercussions. She tries to help a struggling Kurdish woman desperate to evade a stalker and a former client who needs a new immigration attorney. All the while, she’s prone to reveries and what appear to be dissociative episodes that leave Billy stupefied. When they reach an impasse, he accepts a six-month artist’s residency in Hungary. The night before he departs, his wife follows strangers to a party where she gets high on mushrooms and falls asleep. As a wife and a protagonist, she proves wonderfully and frustratingly off-kilter. Eventually she flees New York to visit family in Albania. The novel heats up in the second half, when she returns to Brooklyn, where some of the consequences of her previous heroics materialize to thrilling effect. These suspenseful moments punctuate otherwise meandering tangents. While intriguing at times, the narration relies heavily on rhetorical questions and digressions loosely tied to the story by way of the protagonist’s saying that so and so or such and such “come to mind.” Some of the associations are more interesting than others. The author is at her best when she reveals her thematic concerns and her characters’ interiority, through their idiosyncrasies, interactions with one another, choices, gestures, and dialogue.

This debut novel explores the ways traumas of the past can impact how we experience the present.

Kirkus Reviews