A darkly comic, boundary-pushing debut following an adrift
Pakistani translator in London who attends a mysterious language
school which boasts complete fluency in just ten days, but at a
secret, sinister cost. Anisa Ellahi dreams of being a translator of
'great works of literature,' but instead mostly spends her days
subtitling Bollywood movies, living off her parents' generous
allowance, and discussing the 'underside of life' with her best
friend, Naima. Anisa's mediocre white boyfriend, Adam, only adds to
her growing sense of inadequacy with his savant-level aptitude for
languages, successfully leveraging his expansive knowledge into an
enviable career. But when Adam learns to speak Urdu with native
fluency practically overnight, Anisa forces him to reveal his
secret. Adam begrudgingly tells Anisa about The Centre, an elite,
invite-only program that guarantees near-instant fluency in any
language. Skeptical but intrigued, Anisa enrolls-stripped of her
belongings, contact with the outside world, and bodily autonomy-and
emerges ten days later fluent in German. As Anisa enmeshes herself
further within The Centre, seduced by all that it's made possible,
she soon realizes the true cost of its services. By turns dark,
funny, and surreal, and with twists page-turning and shocking, The
Centre takes the reader on a journey through Karachi, London, and
New Delhi, interrogating the sticky politics of language,
translation, and appropriation with biting specificity, and
ultimately asking: what is success really worth?
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