The Extinction of Irena Rey

NATIONAL BESTSELLER * WALL STREET JOURNAL BEST OF THE YEAR * TOWN & COUNTRY BEST OF THE YEAR * NAMED A MUST READ BY NPR, PEOPLE, VANITY FAIR, ELECTRIC LITERATURE, NYLON, ALTA JOURNAL, CRIMEREADS, AND DEBUTIFUL * NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BY ELLE, THE MILLIONS, BUSTLE, LIT HUB, DANDELION CHANDELIER, ZIBBY MAG, BOOKPAGE, AND THE RUMPUS

International Booker Prize-winning translator and Women's Prize finalist Jennifer Croft's madly brilliant mystery novel of interconnection, transformation, and translation in Europe's last great wilderness.

"Savvy, sly, and hard to classify. A bacchanal." -New York Times
"Fiercely inventive." -Washington Post
"Knives Out on mushrooms." -Elle
"What a joy this is to witness." -NPR.org

Eight translators arrive at a house in a primeval Polish forest on the border of Belarus. It belongs to the world-renowned author Irena Rey, and they are there to translate her magnum opus, Gray Eminence. But within days of their arrival, Irena disappears without a trace.

The translators, who hail from eight different countries but share the same reverence for their beloved author, begin to investigate where she may have gone while proceeding with work on her masterpiece. They explore Irena's ancient wooded refuge, with its intoxicating slime molds and lichens, and study her exotic belongings and layered texts for clues. But doing so reveals secrets-and deceptions-of the Author's that they are utterly unprepared for. Forced to face their differences as they grow increasingly paranoid in a fever dream of isolation and obsession, soon the translators are tangled up in a web of rivalries and desire, threatening not only their work but the fate of their beloved author herself.