Jennifer Croft, The Extinction of Irena Rey ***

The Extinction of Irena Rey is a comic novel about the relationship between an author and her translators, written by the acclaimed translator of Olga Tokarczuk's recent work. A group of translators gather at the author's house to work on her newest book. Their rivalries and differing approaches to translation lead to conflict and to the disappearance of the author.

I was not a fan of the absurdist humor in the first half of the book. There's nothing more painful than comedy you don't find funny. Croft's themes—the codependency of authors and translators, the relationship between human and ecological trauma, the appropriation at the heart of great art—come to the fore in the second half, making it far more engaging and thought-provoking than the first half.