Misinterpretation by Ledia Xhoga
Ledia Xhoga’s debut novel Misinterpretation, longlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize, is a taut, quietly haunting study of translation, trauma, and the limits of empathy. Following an Albanian interpreter in New York whose professional and personal boundaries collapse, the book moves with the precision of a confession and the restraint of poetry. Xhoga’s language is spare yet luminous, capturing how words can both bridge and distort what we mean to share. The slow, deliberate pacing mirrors the narrator’s unraveling, building a quiet tension that never fully resolves. Beneath it all, Xhoga threads the intricate mess of intimacy, desire, guilt, and miscommunication, with a rare psychological acuity. It’s a novel that lingers like an afterimage—unsettling, elegant, and deeply human.
