How We Are Translated

Longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize

People say 'I'm sorry' all the time when it can mean both 'I'm sorry I hurt you' and 'I'm sorry someone else did something I have nothing to do with'. It's like the English language gave up on trying to find a word for sympathy which wasn't also the word for guilt.

Swedish immigrant Kristin won't talk about the Project growing inside her. Her Brazilian-born Scottish boyfriend Ciaran won't speak English at all; he is trying to immerse himself in a Swedish språkbad language bath, to prepare for their future, whatever the fick that means. Their Edinburgh flat is starting to feel very small.

As this young couple is forced to confront the thing that they are both avoiding, they must reckon with the bigger questions of the world outside, and their places in it.

How We Are Translated is the most contemporary of novels; set somehow both in the now and in the distant past; in one city that could be many cities, and in two different languages, though also in defiance of language, with as much focus on the silences between words as the words themselves. It's a novel that maintains just the right balance of oddity, intimacy and illumination. It's a novel that anyone interested in the future of the English novel needs to read!
—Sara Baume, author of Spill Simmer Falter Wither

One of the gentlest and most patient, humane, and quirky things I have read in a long time ... Hugely original.
—Niamh Campbell, author of This Happy

How We Are Translated is a layered work about home, language, barriers, and belonging. Johannesson's unusual and refreshing prose crackles with truth—burning along beautifully.
—Alice Bishop, author of A Constant Hum