In this fantastic debut novel, a gifted but unsuccessful Pakistani translator in London makes pennies subtitling Bollywood movies, until her English boyfriend introduces her to an organisation called the Centre. Cult-like and secretive, the Centre puts translators through an immersive process that makes them idiomatically fluent in any language within 10 days. This Black Mirror take on the world of language labs and translation workshops opens up questions of cultural appropriation, the power of language, memory (the learners at the Centre absorb new languages through listening to other people’s detailed life stories) and privilege.
