Jennifer Croft: The Extinction of Irena Rey (Book Tour)

Croft, herself an acclaimed literary translator (of Polish Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk, among others) both celebrates and lampoons translation communities, which being both altruistic and parasitic, resemble the complex dynamics of forest biomes ... Editorial footnotes, provided by the narrator’s own supposed translator, are delightfully wry. But beneath the satire and the metafiction lie a lament for our all-too-real ongoing ecocide and a desperate appeal that humans might emulate fungi and find sustenance within the destruction.” —Booklist, starred review