The Interpreter — Diego Marani

The Interpreter isn't merely the sequel to New Finnish Grammar and The Last of the Vostyachs: it is a singular and deeply felt thesis, a warped manifesto of sorts, derived from a career spent immersed in languages. For Marani is up to his old tricks. Like in its predecessors, the novel comes dripping in satire, but this time of a more avowedly self reflexive nature... A primordial, universal language is the trick, and it is this which, and it is this with which Marani's interpreter, the shape-shifter at the heart of this masked ball of a novel, purports to have 'infected' Felix. His 'incomprehensible blather' might in fact be 'the ancient language of Eden, the one in which the serpent spoke to Adam'. Marani's ideas are typically far-reaching and provocative.' Thea Lenarduzzi in The Times Literary Supplement 'This is more of a romp than the other two novels, more comedic, albeit a very dark kind of comedy; part investigation into the properties of language, part thriller. The only lead Bellamy has is a list of seemingly random cities: Vancouver, San Diego, Papeete, Vladivostok, Odessa … At one point he is sent to a sinister therapeutic institution, where patients are taught languages unknown to them in order to address their problems (Bellamy is assigned Romanian. Each language has its own therapeutic effect, but “English is the language of cowards and queers,” says an inmate angrily at one point, which is certainly a new way of looking at it). When we find out what links the list of cities together we realise that we have, in a most enjoyable way, been subject to a kind of superior shaggy dog story. Marani understands the appeal of the idea of the primordial language, but knows well enough that it is a Snark, a chimera, which is why the novel ends the way it does, why it is deliberately not as haunting as Grammar and Vostyachs, and also why Marani says this is the last time he'll address the subject in fiction. It is excellently translated by Judith Landry, who I hope is not suffering like Marani's characters.' Nick Lezard's Choice in The Guardian.