Intimate relationships and a search for identity form the core of this captivating story. A young woman works as an interpreter at the Criminal Justice Court in the Hague where she is drawn into simmering personal dramas which impact on both her work and private life: a former African president accused of war crimes; a lover still embroiled in a painful marriage; a friend who witnesses a violent crime. A deep and affecting read.
He shook his head and sighed. Of course, I don't need to tell you this, he conttinued. This is your stock in trade, you deal with words. The others in the room were talking quietly or looking through their papers. He was waiting for me to respond. I hesitated and then said, My job is to make the space between languages as small as possible. This was not the rebuke I wished to make, as a statement it was abstract to the point of saying almost nothing at all. And yet it was true. I would not obfuscate the meaning of what he had done, of these words that he deemed so insufficient, my job was to ensure that there would be no escape route between languages.
