Intimacies by Katie Kitamura

Intimacies by Katie Kitamura is a wonderful book in many ways. It tells the story of an interpreter who comes to The Hague to work at the International Criminal Court. She is a woman of many languages and places, and she is looking for a place to call home. We meet her from her professional and private side. However, the professional side is lingering like a shadow over her private life. 

Kitamura starts by giving an explanation what is demanded of a good interpreter. I wanted to quote it here but it is rather too long. An interpreter has to be neutral and interpret in tone and nuance how it is spoken by the witnesses. "A sliver of unreliability introducing fractures into the testimony of the witness, those fractures would develop into cracks, which would in turn threaten the witness's entire persona. Every person who took to the stand was projecting an image of one kind or another: their testimony was heavily coached and shaped by either the defense or the prosecution, they had been brought to the Court in order to perform a role." Being very sensitive matters, including terrible events of life and death, it is important to get the interpretation right. 

Parallell to her work she is drawn into a personal drama with her love Adriaan. He is married, but separated from his wife, but seems to still be personal involved. Her friend Jana witnesses a random crime in the street, and the interpreter becomes obsessed with it, and befriends the victim's sister. At the same time she gets involved in a political case, interpreting for a former president accused of war crimes. 

"This was why he found my presence soothing. Not because he required my interpretation, not even because I was an amusing distraction, but because he wished for someone to be present during those long hours, someone who would not insist on examining the actions of his past, from which there could no longer be any escape. And I realized that for him I was pure instrument, someone without will or judgment, a consciousness-free zone into which he could escape, the only company he could now bear - that, that was the reason why he had requested my presence, that was the reason I was there."

We never get the name of the interpreter, and that is what makes us see her as an interpreter of her own life. An interpreter is sitting in a glass box, mostly not seen by people in the court, just a voice you hear over your earphones. She analyses actions and language of the people around her. Does not always see matters clearly. As her professional case intermingles into her private life, she begins to doubt everything around her. In search of her identity and sense of belonging she is lost. 

"The house had once belonged to his parents. and despite the fact that it had been extensively renovated, converted into two apartments because the place was too big for a single family, it remained the house he had spent the long years of his childhood in. That comfort was alien to me, we had moved so frequently when I was young that there was no one place I would think of as my childhood home, we were mostly arriving and then leaving, those years were all motion."

As she comes to term with her situation, she slowly start seeing life in a different way. Maybe it is time to settle down somewhere. To find some kind of roots. Is it possible considering her uprooted life? 

Katie Kitamura story of the interpreter could be applicable for many of us.  A sense of not belonging, and how to deal with it. The genius approach here is the comparison between the professional and private life of the interpreter. Especially, since it takes place in the ICC, where cases might be rather extreme. It is easy to say you should leave work behind when you finish for the day, but is it possible in this case? There are several, well built, characters around the interpreter with which she intermingles. 

This is my first book by Katie Kitamura, but probably not my last. I really liked the novel, how she used the interpreter, not only in a professional capacity, but also in interpreting the lives of the characters in the novel. One of the better books I have read this year.