Mireille Gansel grew up in the traumatic aftermath of her family losing everything-including their native languages-to Nazi Germany. In the 1960s and 70s, she translated poets from East Berlin and Vietnam to help broadcast their defiance to the rest of the world. In this half memoire, half philosophical treatise Gansel's debut illustrates the estrangement every translator experiences for the privilege of moving between tongues, and muses on how translation becomes an exercise of empathy between those in exile.

Translated by: Ros Schwartz
Foreword by: Lauren Elkin
Associate editor: Lauren Hook
Preface by: JC Duclos
Afterword by: Ros Schwartz
Designed by: Drew Stevens