In this "dazzling" speculative debut, a London-based Pakistani
translator furthers her stalled career by attending a mysterious
language school that boasts near-instant fluency--but at a secret,
sinister cost (Gillian Flynn)
Anisa Ellahi dreams of being a translator of "great works of
literature," but mostly spends her days subtitling Bollywood movies and
living off her parents' generous allowance. Adding to her growing sense
of inadequacy, her mediocre white boyfriend, Adam, has successfully
leveraged his savant-level aptitude for languages into an enviable
career. But when Adam learns to speak Urdu practically overnight, Anisa
forces him to reveal his secret.
Adam begrudgingly tells her about The Centre, an elite, invite-only
program that guarantees complete fluency in any language, in just ten
days. This sounds, to Anisa, like a step toward the life she's always
wanted. Stripped of her belongings and all contact with the outside
world, she enrolls and undergoes The Centre's strange and rigorous
processes. But as Anisa enmeshes herself further within the
organization, seduced by all that it's made possible, she soon realizes
the hidden cost of its services.
By turns darkly comic and surreal, and with twists as page-turning as
they are shocking, The Centre journeys through Karachi, London, and
New Delhi, interro-gating the sticky politics of language, translation,
and appropriation along the way. Through Anisa's addictive tale of
striving and self-actualization, Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi ultimately asks
the reader: What is the real price we pay in our scramble to the center?
