Books by Jennifer Croft

“In The Extinction of Irena Rey, eight translators arrive at a house deep in the primeval forest ready to translate a book by a revered Polish author. Shortly after they arrive, the writer the have come to pay tribute to disappears. It’s a strange and very funny book that offers fascinating insight into the world of the literary translator.” Read more...

Notable Novels of Spring 2024

Cal Flyn, Five Books Editor

“This book is attempting to embrace an entire world and culture, a particular period in Poland and Eastern Europe, and fold it into everything that can be known. It is a maximalist novel in that sense. There’s the theology of it, but also how market garden towns worked, how peasants lived, what beliefs people had and how those were challenged or changed. Both The Books of Jacob and A New Name are dealing with the numinous, a sense of God. But Jacob Frank is an apostate, he’s someone who is prepared to overturn centuries of his own religion in an attempt to create something new. Thanks to Olga—through Jenny—we get to witness this vast pageant of what it means to have lived through that time in Poland. It’s like a very, very large Bayeux Tapestry. But also, what it is to look back on that, given what we know now, because there are outside observers.” Read more...

The Best of World Literature: The 2022 International Booker Prize Shortlist

Frank Wynne, Translator