Translation is physical proximity, not neutrality
Standing inches away from Alfred, she learns that faithful translation also transmits body heat, breath, and panic.
Book summary
Current BestsellerGoodreads FavoritePerennial Seller
Misinterpretation
by Ledia Xhoga
An Albanian interpreter unravels trauma, truth, and her own marriage in New York.
Published 2024
Topics
Trauma RecoveryImmigrant LifeTranslation EthicsPsychological SuspenseDiaspora Journeys
Reading companion
How to read Misinterpretation with Readever
Read the novel in three sittings that mirror the narrator’s geographic arcs (Queens → Tirana → return). After each section, open Readever’s split-pane note view to log sentences where a single verb choice changes trust, then ask the AI reading companion to suggest alternate translations the narrator could have delivered. The novel’s reality slippage rewards slow re-reading of key therapy transcripts—use Readever’s timeline tool to pin when details shift, so you can compare them on a second pass.
Things to know before reading
- Expect frank depictions of torture aftermath, self-harm ideation, and stalking; create margins in Readever to decompress after heavy passages.
- The narrator is intentionally unreliable—track what she withholds through Readever’s highlight filters to see when language shields or exposes her.
- Albanian, Serbian, and Turkish phrases appear without glosses; the in-app translation panel can surface literal meaning while you consider emotional subtext.
- The Albania interlude reorders the timeline; keep Readever’s chapter bookmarks handy to map cause and effect when she returns to New York.
Brief summary
Misinterpretation in a nutshell
An unnamed Albanian interpreter thinks she can keep professional distance from Alfred, a Kosovar torture survivor who needs her voice in therapy. Instead, his nightmares echo her own buried memories, eroding the boundaries between translation, confession, and complicity. A reckless attempt to help another client pulls her into a web of immigration bureaucracy, street-level danger, and mounting paranoia.
Back in Tirana, she confronts a mother who rebuilt their past through silence, only to discover that language is the last refuge she can trust. Ledia Xhoga’s propulsive debut moves between Queens apartments, therapists’ offices, and Albanian kitchens to ask whether empathy can become its own form of self-harm.
Key ideas overview
Misinterpretation summary of 3 key ideas
Xhoga shows how translation, trauma, and migration warp perception until even compassion feels predatory.
Compassion can slide into saviorism
Her off-the-books attempt to help Besarta, the Kurdish poet, sets off the chain reaction that endangers everyone.
Homecoming requires a new language
In Tirana, her mother refuses to talk about the past, forcing the narrator to invent vocabulary for grief.
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Translate empathy without losing yourself
Misinterpretation lets you inhabit a mind where every word might betray family, clients, or self. It’s a gripping study of how care work, migration, and PTSD reshape a body before they reshape a biography, perfect for readers who want literary momentum with thriller stakes.
Deep dive
Key ideas in Misinterpretation
Key idea 1
Translation is physical proximity, not neutrality
Standing inches away from Alfred, she learns that faithful translation also transmits body heat, breath, and panic.
The narrator believes she can translate words without absorbing feeling, but proximity turns each session into a mirror. As Alfred relives electrocution and beatings, she calibrates tone, hesitation, and touch, realizing the work is less about accuracy than about witnessing. The strain manifests in insomnia and hypervigilance, proving that linguistic labor is a somatic act.
Remember
- "Interpreting trauma becomes a full-body experience that can’t be switched off after a session." - "Professional codes often ignore the emotional labor immigrant women perform to sound ‘neutral.’"
Key idea 2
Compassion can slide into saviorism
Her off-the-books attempt to help Besarta, the Kurdish poet, sets off the chain reaction that endangers everyone.
When she forges paperwork to protect Besarta from deportation, she convinces herself it’s solidarity. The plan exposes Besarta to more surveillance and pulls the narrator into violent debt-collection networks. The episode underscores how unchecked altruism can replicate the power imbalances it tries to solve.
Remember
- "Assess who truly benefits when you ‘help’ someone whose agency has already been eroded." - "Readever prompts can help surface where good intentions mutate into control."
Key idea 3
Homecoming requires a new language
In Tirana, her mother refuses to talk about the past, forcing the narrator to invent vocabulary for grief.
The Albanian interlude dismantles nostalgia. Streets feel smaller, relatives speak in proverbs, and the narrator realizes she has no words to describe the life she built abroad. Translating her own story for family proves harder than interpreting for strangers, revealing how migration fractures identity into multiple dialects of selfhood.
Remember
- "Home isn’t recovered; it’s retranslated every time you return." - "Use personal annotations to note when the narrator’s code-switching betrays her shifting loyalties."
Who should read Misinterpretation?
"Readers who want Booker-caliber literary suspense with the velocity of a psychological thriller." - "Interpreters, therapists, and frontline advocates examining secondary trauma."
Diaspora readers exploring how language mediates memory, obligation, and desire.
About the author
Ledia Xhoga was born in Tirana, earned her MFA at Texas State, and now lives in Brooklyn. Misinterpretation won the New York City Book Award, was shortlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and is longlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize.
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"Download the official Readever marginalia pack for Misinterpretation to see translator-specific prompts already embedded in key chapters." - "Sync your vocabulary bank with Albanian phrases so pronunciation guides appear inline during the therapy transcripts."
Activate Readever’s empathy tracker to chart how your mood shifts alongside the narrator’s, then compare with other readers in the community thread.
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