Fiction. Translation. Marie Beig’s HERMINE is a heartbreaking bestiary, a human life told in sixty-four animals. The book’s design is apt, since its protagonist elicits less regard from her farm family than its animals do. Imagine a world in which your first memories are of your ‘father’s bad-tempered scowl and the angry faces of sisters and brothers who were struck and struck back.’ A world in which tenderness is ‘always turning away again to someone else’ – -Jim Shepard. Translated from the German by Jaimy Gordon.