Katie Kitamura Talks About ‘Affinities’

Subscriber: iTunes | Google Play Music | How to Listen The somewhat directionless, anonymous narrator of Katie Kitamura’s fourth novel, “Affinities” He gets a job as a translator at an international criminal court. In this week’s podcast, Kitamura talks about the novel, including her awareness of the book’s title. “As a word, ‘closeness’ is something …

A Coolly Written Novel About Translation Arts and Its Subject ‘Affinities’

Kitamura pays attention to the dark side of cityscapes, the things we choose not to learn. “There are prisons and much worse all around us,” he writes, “in New York City there was a black area above a bustling dining room, the windows were blacked out and the rooms were soundproofed so that the screams …

Katie Kitamura on ‘Affinities’ and the Cognitive Dissonance of Being

He has felt some of these dilemmas himself over the past few years. As the world burns and the planet heats up, she finds stability in her relatively small life, quite happy, and is raising two children with Kunzru. “Affinities” are often a reflection of this balancing act: the evil being judged and the banal …