Fascinating, Mysterious 'Intimacies' Doesn't Let Readers Get Close Enough
Katie Kitamura's new novel follows an unnamed woman working as a translator at The Hague who works with war criminals — but can readers really know a narrator who remains resolutely unknown?
The unnamed heroine of Intimacies, Katie Kitamura's fascinating and mysterious new novel, observes that "none of us are able to see the world we are living in â the world, occupying as it does the contradiction between its banality ... and its extremity." She's a new interpreter at The Hague, responsible for the banal function of translating legal proceedings for extremely evil defendants: genocidal former heads of state.
We know only that the narrator came to
