As featured in The New York Times Book Review
‘Do you have to stare like that?’ I asked.
‘Think about the actors in porn. They’ve got no problem showing themselves off.’
‘Think about when I broke your nose,’ I replied.
Ellinor is thirty-six. She wears soft black sweatpants and a Michelin Man jacket. She fights. Smart and unsentimental, she tries her hand at online dating, only to be stranded by a snowstorm with a literary critic. Cut to Max Lamas, an author who dreams of a polyglot lover, a woman who will understand him—in every tongue. His search takes him to Italy, where he befriends a marchesa whose old Roman family is on the brink of ruin. At the heart of this literary intrigue is a handwritten manuscript that leaves no one unaffected.
The Polyglot Lovers is a fiercely witty and nuanced contribution to feminism in the #metoo era. Pleasure is an elusive thing, love even more so.
Lina Wolff (b. 1973) lived and worked in Italy and Spain for many years before returning to live in Sweden. During her years in Valencia and Madrid, she wrote her short story collection Många människor dör som du. Her first novel, Bret Easton Ellis and Other Dogs was awarded the prestigious Vi Magazine Literature Prize, the English Pen Translation Award, as well as the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize for the English edition. Her last novel, The Polyglot Lovers won the August Prize for Fiction in 2016, and has since won the English Pen Translation Award in 2019, with rights sold in 18 territories to date.
The edifice of male genius is annihilated in this galvanizing novel.
Publishers Weekly Starred Review
Feminism for the Fleabag Generation
The Spectator
highly enjoyable absurdist comedy
The Guardian