In Translation

Winner of the Pen Award for Best First Fiction 1994

This moving novel of love and betrayal follows Helena as she learns to cope with being abandoned by her lover – renowned translator Navaz Nicholson – after travelling to an unfamiliar country to be with him. With her stubborn pride refusing to allow herself to return home, Helena begins to intercept installments of the Japanese novel that Navaz is currently translating. Gradually altering words and phrases, Helena begins to take over completely, writing Nishimura’s novelistic love-triangle beyond its own ending.

Annamarie Jagose was born in 1965 in Ashburton and is an academic and writer. She has written three novels: In Translation (1994), Lulu: A Romance (1998) and Slow Water (2003); and several scholarly works in lesbian literary studies and queer critical theory. She is currently the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Sydney.