The Extinction of Irena Rey [Croft, Jennifer]

Author: Jennifer Croft

NATIONAL BESTSELLER * NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY WALL STREET JOURNAL, ELLE, TOWN & COUNTRY, ELECTRIC LITERATURE, LIBRARY JOURNAL, CRIMEREADS, DOCUMENT JOURNAL, AND WORDS WITHOUT BORDERS * NAMED A MUST READ BY NPR, PEOPLE, VANITY FAIR, NYLON, ALTA JOURNAL, AND DEBUTIFUL

International Booker Prize-winning translator and Women's Prize finalist Jennifer Croft's madly brilliant mystery novel of interconnection, transformation, and translation in Europe's last great wilderness.

"Savvy, sly, and hard to classify. A bacchanal." -New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice)
"Fiercely inventive." -Washington Post
"Knives Out on mushrooms." -Elle
"Surprised me at every turn." -NPR.org

Eight translators arrive at a house in a primeval Polish forest on the border of Belarus. It belongs to the world-renowned author Irena Rey, and they are there to translate her magnum opus, Grey Eminence. But within days of their arrival, Irena disappears without a trace.

The translators, who hail from eight different countries but share the same reverence for their beloved author, begin to investigate where she may have gone while proceeding with work on her masterpiece. They explore Irena's ancient wooded refuge, with its intoxicating slime molds and lichens, and study her exotic belongings and layered texts for clues. But doing so reveals secrets-and deceptions-of the Author's that they are utterly unprepared for. Forced to face their differences as they grow increasingly paranoid in a fever dream of isolation and obsession, soon the translators are tangled up in a web of rivalries and desire, threatening not only their work but the fate of their beloved author herself.

Publisher: Macmillan Publishers (MPS)
Published: 06/17/2025
Pages: 320
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.06oz
Size: 8.25h x 5.51w x 1.00d
ISBN: 9781639736393

About the Author
Jennifer Croft won a Guggenheim Fellowship for this novel, the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing for her memoir Homesick, and the International Booker Prize for her translation of Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk's Flights. She is the translator of Federico Falco's A Perfect Cemetery, Romina Paula's August, Pedro Mairal's The Woman from Uruguay, and Olga Tokarczuk's The Books of Jacob. She has also received the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature. She lives in Tulsa and Los Angeles.