TRANSLATOR CL

When renowned translator Hanne Schubert tumbles down a flight of stairs, she suffersa brain injury and ends up with an unusual but real condition: the ability tospeak the one language she learned later in life-Japanese-despite losing hernative tongue. Isolated from the English-speaking world, Hanne leaves SanFrancisco and retreats to Japan. While Hanne is in the middle of giving aspeech about translation, the Japanese novelist whose work she has recently translatedstorms the stage and accuses her of mangling his work. Distraught, she seeksout new inspiration for her translation: a Japanese Noh actor namedMoto who stands at an existential crossroads. Through their contentious interactions,Moto slowly finds his way back onto stage while Hanne begins to understand howshe mistranslated not only the novel, but also her daughter, who has not spokento Hanne in six years. Armed with new knowledge languages both spoken andunspoken, she sets out to make amends.

Nina Schuyler's first novel, The Painting, was nominated for the Northern California Book Award, and named a “Best Book of the Year” by the San Francisco Chronicle and Rocky Mountain News. She was nominated for a 2010 Pushcart Prize and teaches creative writing at the University of San Francisco.