Intimacies
Katie Kitamura · 2021
An interpreter at the International Criminal Court in The Hague becomes entangled in a war crimes trial and a complicated love affair. Kitamura's cool, precise novel treats language as both bridge and weapon. Among the most formally controlled novels of its year.
The case against
Cool can shade into inert, and here it does. Kitamura's unnamed narrator drifts through The Hague observing everyone's ambiguity, including her own, until ambiguity becomes the only event; the mugging subplot evaporates, the love affair idles, the trial winds down offstage. Control this complete starts to look like a novel declining to commit to itself.
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