Irena Rey is ‘Our Author’, a woman revered and adored across the globe for her brilliant novels, and her charismatic ways. No one adores her more than her tribe of translators, all of whom have gathered at her home on the edge of a forest in Poland to translate her latest work, the book they believe to be Irena’s magnum opus. Soon after the eight of them arrive, Our Author disappears.

Left alone in the personal space of their idol, the team continue to work on translating the book into eight languages, but the longer Irena stays away, the more bizarre their stay becomes. Confused, isolated and intrigued, they try to discover her whereabouts, but instead end up uncovering a web of deceit, stolen goods, and a parrot. It takes seven weeks of bickering, writing, lying, cheating and paranoia before their stay comes to a sudden end, and their beloved author is unmasked.

As a premise for a mystery novel, this is as good as it gets. But author Jennifer Croft, who is herself an internationally renowned translator, goes one step further. The novel is written from the perspective of one of the translators, the woman who is to re-write Irena’s book into Spanish. But she is not writing a memoir, she writes it as a fictional account, which has then been translated into English by an American who was also one of the translators there during those seven weeks, and she makes her presence felt with the inclusion of a foreword and footnotes throughout the story.

All of which adds layer upon layer of intrigue to this remarkable book. With two unreliable narrators, it is funny and brilliant and clever, and deluded, mad and beautiful all at once. It is also an extraordinary exploration of language and the influence words can have on us all.