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| Katie Kitamura INTIMACIES BY KATIE KITAMURA Riverhead Books (US) and Jonathan Cape (UK). Order here, here, and here (UK). New York Times 10 Best Books of 2021
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| Katie Kitamura at home in Brooklyn, 2 July 2021. Photo by Caroline Tompkins |
An interpreter has come to The Hague to escape New York and work at the International Court. A woman of many languages and identities, she is looking for a place to finally call home.
She's drawn into simmering personal dramas: her lover, Adriaan, is separated from his wife but still entangled in his marriage. Her friend Jana witnesses a seemingly random act of violence, a crime the interpreter becomes increasingly obsessed with as she befriends the victim's sister. And she's pulled into an explosive political controversy when she’s asked to interpret for a former president accused of war crimes.
A woman of quiet passion, she confronts power, love, and violence, both in her personal intimacies and in her work at the Court. She is soon pushed to the precipice, where betrayal and heartbreak threaten to overwhelm her, forcing her to choose what she wants from her life.
Praise for Intimacies
“Coolly written and casts of spell … One of Kitamura’s gifts is to inject every scene with a pinprick of dread. All novels are in a sense about language, but “Intimacies” presses down on how meaning is made, and how it is compromised … This novel is in some senses ‘about’ translation. But the real heat here lies in the author’s abiding interest in the subtleties of human power dynamics … Her antennae are precisely attuned to magnetism, verbal dexterity, physical beauty, and conversely, their lack … Certainly one of the best novels I’ve read in 2021. A taut, moody novel that moves purposefully between worlds.” –Dwight Garner, The New York Times
“‘Intimacies’ is very much a story that seems to be about something familiar but soon morphs into something disconcertingly strange … Kitamura is exploring impossibly remote territory; few of us will ever have any contact, let alone close contact, with someone who committed crimes against humanity … But with her Jamesian attention to the slightest movement of bodies and words, Kitamura keeps ‘Intimacies’ rooted to the ordinary domestic experiences of her narrator, her petty jealousies, her passing suspicions. The effect is a kind of emotional intensity that’s gripping because it feels increasingly unsustainable. Who could endure that raw-nerve sensitivity to the power of language to love, to deceive, to promise, to kill? Kitamura pulls us through a rising panic of hyperawareness until the story’s fever finally breaks with a note of hope and relief. But that can’t quell the novels’s reverberations, which expose something incomprehensible about the moral dimensions of modern life.” –Ron Charles, The Washington Post
“Spellbinding … It’s here, in these slippages, that the novel’s thrilling, ominous energy is found. Cusk is an obvious point of comparison … But there’s so much more going on here too. In the same way that Kitamura’s previous novel, A Separation — a psychological meditation on the ties that bind a marriage — cunningly masqueraded as a murder mystery, Intimacies is a brilliant examination of language conveyed with the kind of pacing, tautness and menace usually associated with a thriller. The pervasive sense of threat that envelops the book is further heightened by the piercing clarity of the prose. Kitamura’s every bit as precise as her narrator, and the cool restraint of her writing — even when dealing with heightened emotional and moral stakes — is nothing short of magnificent. Intimacies is both a gripping read and a chilling consideration of what’s involved when we choose to ignore the things we don’t want to see, let alone understand.” –Lucy Scholes, Financial Times
“A brilliant examination of language and communication … the assiduous nature of interpretation … is reflected in the style of the prose: sparsity without dullness, clarity without overstatement. Kitamura is particularly skilled at finding moments in her narrator's social life — at a small dinner party, or in a museum gallery — when the role of interpreter is foisted upon her unwillingly … Kitamura takes great care in her depictions of speech and gesture, so that monstrously cruel people maintain their charisma, and intelligent people sound uncertain when they are sure. The acts of speaking, listening and understanding are given proper respect in this work; they inspire fear, amazement and awe.” –Jackie Thomas-Kennedy, Minneapolis Star Tribune
"Intimacies is beautifully written, deep and soulful, and imbued with a calm, wise energy. You can read it as a psychological thriller or a philosophical meditation but for me, primarily, it is the quest of a woman, a stranger in a strange city, as she struggles with power, injustice, memory, and love - or the lack of it … a deeply transformative story.” –Elif Shafak, Guardian
“Intimacies is a gorgeous, destabilizing meditation on the power differentials built into language and the gradual distortions of our emotional allegiances.” –Raven Leilani, New York Magazine
“Kitamura gravitates toward characters in emotional freefall, psychologically between acts of translation … Intimacies is filled with gaps in knowing, with lovers disappearing, stories half-told, the parts of relationships and memory left out, all lingering like blind spots in consciousness. One might call Kitamura one of the most talented thriller writers who doesn’t write thrillers, for her novels are tinged with menace and threat and dark alleys that seem primed for acts of violence. And yet, really, the artistry in the New York-based author’s work lies in the delicate ways in which characters continue on, persevere slightly better or slightly worse, and survive.” –Christopher Bollen, Interview
"A master of cool disquiet... Kitamura writes with forceful, direct prose that makes for a bracing read and leaves the reader mesmerized." –Lauren Mechling, Vogue
“In her unforgettable 2017 A Separation, Kitamura took her protagonist to the edge of an island in the Mediterranean; in her new and equally unforgettable novel, she places an interpreter in the middle of The Hague. This woman is also embroiled in many dramas, personal and professional, forcing her to choose a path and an identity.” –Bethanne Patrick, Washington Post
“Calling all Rachel Cuskheads and W.G. Sebald stans! Kitamura is a novelist of enchanting imagination and minimalist prose style … The novel’s plot twists are of the subtle, jaw-tightening variety rather than the dramatic, stomach-knotting sort … Intimacies is for those who like their addictive novels to sneak up behind them rather than slap them in the face.” –Molly Young, Vulture
“Intimacies by Katie Kitamura is just under 250 pages but packs a powerful punch. Beautifully written and mysterious … the book's intensity quietly, hauntingly builds, resulting in a fascinating story that literary fiction lovers will devour.” –Real Simple
“Morally complex, even philosophical, emotionally affecting, and clear as cold water. It sneaks up on you, page by page; by the end I wanted to jump right back in.” –Emily Temple, Lit Hub
“Spare, diamond-cut prose … reveals the pretty lies we tell about community and morality.” –Oprah Daily
“Fans of sparse millennial tales: Run, don’t walk.” –Entertainment Weekly
“Written with her singularly seductive and rhythmic prose, Intimacies is a beach read for the Ferrante set, a decidedly adult exploration of political and personal accountability that still manages to be effortlessly sexy. Sure to be part of the cultural conversation long after the summer heat fads.” –Chicago Review of Books
“There’s a restrained intensity to Katie Kitamura’s prose … like reading in the eye of a tornado, the tight, muted sentences suggesting an overwhelming tempest just beyond them.” –A.V. Club
“Quiet strength and subtle tension make this psychological drama unique and altogether engrossing. Kitamura quietly explores the layers and complexities of intimacies in our hearts, in our languages and politics and throughout the world.” –Ms. Magazine
“Quietly intense … The attraction in this novel is the narrator’s assured, graceful voice and the subtle epiphanies she uncovers about our queasy, enigmatic relationships to one another. This is a good slow burn.” –Tomi Obaro, Buzzfeed
“It’s clear there’s more than just language that’s being lost in translation in Katie Kitamura’s thriller of a novel … In exploring how one’s proximity to power and violence can hold endless repercussions, Kitamura interrogates how our intimacies can change the course of our lives.” –TIME
“This is the kind of book that quickens the pulse not because of logic-defying plot twists, but rather because of how surgically precise it is in revealing how our emotional realities take on epic dimensions in our own minds … psychologically disconcerting – like all the very best thrillers.” –Kristin Iverson, Refinery29
“I simply don’t want to spoil any of this book for you because it is best just read – I read it in one sitting, literally … Kitamura’s skill is remarkable in capturing the role of a woman tasked with translating atrocity. An absolute must read.” –Emily Burack, Alma
“A strange and mesmerizing tale about language, understanding, and the role of strangers in our most intimate moments.” –Book Riot
“Stunning … it’s a delight to accompany the narrator’s astute observational intelligence through these pages …The novel packs a controlled but considerable wallop, all the more pleasurable for its nuance. This psychological tone poem is a barbed and splendid meditation on peril.” –Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Like her protagonist, Kitamura is a master of precisely evocative language. In her work and in her isolation, the interpreter recognizes how familiarity can obscure intimacy, while its lack can yet lead to discomfiting proximity. The novel takes places so deeply within her that it's truly person-like, at once forthright and mysterious, a piercing and propulsive meditation on closeness of many sorts.” –Booklist (starred review)
“An elegant and gripping story.” –Publishers Weekly
“Intimacies is a haunting, precise, and morally astute novel that reads like a psychological thriller. It expertly and concisely delves into the paradoxes of language—how language can obscure our own complicity, and how language can enable us to escape our own delusions. Katie Kitamura is a wonder; her work is striking, stylish, and fully realized.” —Dana Spiotta, author of Innocents and Others and Eat the Document
“An amazing book, beautiful and captivating.” —Elif Shafak, author of 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World and The Forty Rules of Love
"A novel about the ruthlessness of power, the check of virtue, and the purportedly neutral bureaucracy meant to mediate between them. Katie Kitamura is among the most brilliant and profound writers at work today; she reminds me how high the moral stakes of fiction can be.” —Garth Greenwell, author of Cleanness and What Belongs to You
“Katie Kitamura's voice -- spare, electric, evocative -- could take me anywhere. Especially into this landscape of global wanderers, uprooted women, fragmented souls. Intimacies is a singular pleasure - a dangerous, seductive, dagger of a novel.” —Danzy Senna, author of New People
“Intimacies is a perfect novel – taut and seductive. Kitamura has made the existential thriller all her own, and she effortlessly negotiates the personal and the geopolitical with a complex moral nuance. Simply stunning.” –Brandon Taylor, author of Real Life and Filthy Animals
"Saturated with enigmatic longing, Intimacies peels back the layers of sympathy, antipathy, and morality that both connect and divide us from others, unearthing something precious beneath. Katie Kitamura is a revelatory interpreter of the human heart, in all its brilliance and obscurity.” –Alexandra Kleeman, author of You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine and Something New Under the Sun
“Gripping and elegant. No one’s work simmers with emotional complexity like Katie Kitamura.” –Mira Jacob, author of Good Talk
“Katie Kitamura writes about being an outsider like no other author. Quiet moments are charged with tension and power. In short, the book is remarkable - beautifully written and intelligent.” –Avni Doshi, author of Burnt Sugar
“Katie Kitamura’s beautifully wrought new novel is tense and suspenseful, a mystery about human choices. Like a work by Graham Greene, Intimacies kept me in its tight grip.” –Lynne Tillman, author of Men and Apparitions
“Katie Kitamura writes with empathy, confidence, elegance and fearlessness. Her voice is entirely unique, and this novel leaves you feeling deeply unsettled in the best possible way. Read this book and you will see the world slightly differently forever.” –Tahmima Anam, author of The Good Muslim
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