2021 National Book Award for Fiction (longlist)
A NEW YORK TIMES TOP 10 BOOK OF 2021
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2021 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN FICTION
ONE OF BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE 2021 READS
AN INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER
A BEST BOOK OF 2021 FROM Washington Post, Vogue, Time, Oprah Daily, New York Times
“Intimacies is a haunting, precise, and morally astute novel that reads like a psychological thriller…. Katie Kitamura is a wonder.” —Dana Spiotta, author of Wayward and Eat the Document
“One of the best novels I’ve read in 2021.” – Dwight Garner, The New York Times
A novel from the author of A Separation, an electrifying story about a woman caught between many truths.
An interpreter has come to The Hague to escape New York and work at the International Court. A woman of many languages and identities, she is looking for a place to finally call home.
She's drawn into simmering personal dramas: her lover, Adriaan, is separated from his wife but still entangled in his marriage. Her friend Jana witnesses a seemingly random act of violence, a crime the interpreter becomes increasingly obsessed with as she befriends the victim's sister. And she's pulled into an explosive political controversy when she’s asked to interpret for a former president accused of war crimes.
A woman of quiet passion, she confronts power, love, and violence, both in her personal intimacies and in her work at the Court. She is soon pushed to the precipice, where betrayal and heartbreak threaten to overwhelm her, forcing her to decide what she wants from her life.
Genre: Mystery
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2021 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN FICTION
ONE OF BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE 2021 READS
AN INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER
A BEST BOOK OF 2021 FROM Washington Post, Vogue, Time, Oprah Daily, New York Times
“Intimacies is a haunting, precise, and morally astute novel that reads like a psychological thriller…. Katie Kitamura is a wonder.” —Dana Spiotta, author of Wayward and Eat the Document
“One of the best novels I’ve read in 2021.” – Dwight Garner, The New York Times
A novel from the author of A Separation, an electrifying story about a woman caught between many truths.
An interpreter has come to The Hague to escape New York and work at the International Court. A woman of many languages and identities, she is looking for a place to finally call home.
She's drawn into simmering personal dramas: her lover, Adriaan, is separated from his wife but still entangled in his marriage. Her friend Jana witnesses a seemingly random act of violence, a crime the interpreter becomes increasingly obsessed with as she befriends the victim's sister. And she's pulled into an explosive political controversy when she’s asked to interpret for a former president accused of war crimes.
A woman of quiet passion, she confronts power, love, and violence, both in her personal intimacies and in her work at the Court. She is soon pushed to the precipice, where betrayal and heartbreak threaten to overwhelm her, forcing her to decide what she wants from her life.
Genre: Mystery
Praise for this book
"Katie Kitamura writes about being an outsider like no other author. Quiet moments are charged with tension and power. In short, the book is remarkable - beautifully written and intelligent." - Avni Doshi
"A novel about the ruthlessness of power, the check of virtue, and the purportedly neutral bureaucracy meant to mediate between them. Katie Kitamura is among the most brilliant and profound writers at work today; she reminds me how high the moral stakes of fiction can be." - Garth Greenwell
"Saturated with enigmatic longing, Intimacies peels back the layers of sympathy, antipathy, and morality that both connect and divide us from others, unearthing something precious beneath. Katie Kitamura is a revelatory interpreter of the human heart, in all its brilliance and obscurity." - Alexandra Kleeman
"Katie Kitamura's voice -- spare, electric, evocative -- could take me anywhere. Especially into this landscape of global wanderers, uprooted women, fragmented souls. Intimacies is a singular pleasure -- a dangerous, seductive, dagger of a novel." - Danzy Senna
"Intimacies is a haunting, precise, and morally astute novel that reads like a psychological thriller. It expertly and concisely delves into the paradoxes of language--how language can obscure our own complicity, and how language can enable us to escape our own delusions. Katie Kitamura is a wonder; her work is striking, stylish, and fully realized." - Dana Spiotta
"Intimacies is a perfect novel--taut and seductive. Kitamura has made the existential thriller all her own, and she effortlessly negotiates the personal and the geopolitical with a complex moral nuance. Simply stunning." - Brandon Taylor
"Katie Kitamura's beautifully wrought novel is tense and suspenseful, a mystery about human choices. From its protagonist's work as an interpreter at the Hague, from crimes against humanity, to friendship and a love affair, the interpreter can't escape questions of judgment and justice. She balances tenuously on an ethical scale, while interpretation itself is brilliantly employed as the faulty method that subsumes all communication. Like a work by Graham Greene, INTIMACIES kept me in its tight grip." - Lynne Tillman
"A novel about the ruthlessness of power, the check of virtue, and the purportedly neutral bureaucracy meant to mediate between them. Katie Kitamura is among the most brilliant and profound writers at work today; she reminds me how high the moral stakes of fiction can be." - Garth Greenwell
"Saturated with enigmatic longing, Intimacies peels back the layers of sympathy, antipathy, and morality that both connect and divide us from others, unearthing something precious beneath. Katie Kitamura is a revelatory interpreter of the human heart, in all its brilliance and obscurity." - Alexandra Kleeman
"Katie Kitamura's voice -- spare, electric, evocative -- could take me anywhere. Especially into this landscape of global wanderers, uprooted women, fragmented souls. Intimacies is a singular pleasure -- a dangerous, seductive, dagger of a novel." - Danzy Senna
"Intimacies is a haunting, precise, and morally astute novel that reads like a psychological thriller. It expertly and concisely delves into the paradoxes of language--how language can obscure our own complicity, and how language can enable us to escape our own delusions. Katie Kitamura is a wonder; her work is striking, stylish, and fully realized." - Dana Spiotta
"Intimacies is a perfect novel--taut and seductive. Kitamura has made the existential thriller all her own, and she effortlessly negotiates the personal and the geopolitical with a complex moral nuance. Simply stunning." - Brandon Taylor
"Katie Kitamura's beautifully wrought novel is tense and suspenseful, a mystery about human choices. From its protagonist's work as an interpreter at the Hague, from crimes against humanity, to friendship and a love affair, the interpreter can't escape questions of judgment and justice. She balances tenuously on an ethical scale, while interpretation itself is brilliantly employed as the faulty method that subsumes all communication. Like a work by Graham Greene, INTIMACIES kept me in its tight grip." - Lynne Tillman
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