The Centre
A Novel
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3.6 • 26 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
A New Yorker Best Book of the Year • A New York Times Editors' Choice • An Amazon Editors’ Pick for Best Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
“The most fascinating debut I've read in years—enigmatic, biting, absurd, and right when you think you've got it figured out, utterly horrifying.” —Daniel Kraus, New York Times bestselling author of Whalefall and The Shape of Water (with Guillermo del Toro)
“A gripping, surreal mystery about language, identity, and greed.” —Peng Shepherd, bestselling author of The Cartographers
“The Centre draws you in with a gentle hand until it throws the mallet down.” —Chelsea G. Summers, author of A Certain Hunger
“The Centre is as haunting as it is tempting; this book devoured me back.” —Sarah Gailey, author of Just Like Home and Eat the Rich
In this “dazzling” speculative debut, a London-based Pakistani translator furthers her stalled career by attending a mysterious language school that boasts near-instant fluency—but at a secret, sinister cost (Gillian Flynn)
Anisa Ellahi dreams of being a translator of “great works of literature,” but mostly spends her days subtitling Bollywood movies and living off her parents’ generous allowance. Adding to her growing sense of inadequacy, her mediocre white boyfriend, Adam, has successfully leveraged his savant-level aptitude for languages into an enviable career. But when Adam learns to speak Urdu practically overnight, Anisa forces him to reveal his secret.
Adam begrudgingly tells her about The Centre, an elite, invite-only program that guarantees complete fluency in any language, in just ten days. This sounds, to Anisa, like a step toward the life she’s always wanted. Stripped of her belongings and all contact with the outside world, she enrolls and undergoes The Centre’s strange and rigorous processes. But as Anisa enmeshes herself further within the organization, seduced by all that it’s made possible, she soon realizes the hidden cost of its services.
By turns darkly comic and surreal, and with twists as page-turning as they are shocking, The Centre journeys through Karachi, London, and New Delhi, interrogating the sticky politics of language, translation, and appropriation along the way. Through Anisa’s addictive tale of striving and self-actualization, Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi ultimately asks the reader: What is the real price we pay in our scramble to the center?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Manazir Siddiqi's ambitious debut packs insightful observations about racism, classism, and colonialism into a dark mystery involving translator Anisa Ellahi. Born into a wealthy family in Karachi, Pakistan, 35-year-old Anisa now lives in London and augments her lavish allowance by subtitling Bollywood films, though she dreams of a career translating literary works. At a translation conference, she meets Adam, a man who, despite his poor university marks, has parlayed his fluency in 10 languages into a well-paid career. The two begin dating, and after some badgering, Adam admits that "a super elite, super-secret" (and super expensive) language school called the Centre is responsible for his linguistic prowess. Seeing the school as her chance to make her dreams come true, Anisa signs a nondisclosure agreement and settles in for a 10-day stay at the Centre. As she learns more about the school's methodology and its employees, however, she fears she's made a terrible mistake. Anisa's perceptive narration propels the novel, and Manazir Siddiqi's sharp cultural analysis of England, Pakistan, and India deepens her devilish plot, though the ending is a bit of a letdown. Still, this marks Manazir Siddiqi as a writer to watch.
Customer Reviews
A morally ambiguous and unsympathetic protagonist
Anisa is not a character you root for. She’s self absorbed and has very few values or ethics and any she does have are beyond flexible. She has breaches in friendship and outright betrayals but there is no resolution just friends saying that’s ok and allowing the relationship to continue. I have a feeling this is pretty autobiographical too. She seems to be pretty guilty about choosing to live in western culture but not guilty enough to live in her birth culture. The amount of awkward and stilted incorporation of Pakistani terms feels like a penance. If this is a translation of a foreign book then apologies. But if it was written in English for a western market it is super heavy handed.