To Leave with the Reindeer is the account of a woman who has been trained for a life she cannot live. She readies herself for freedom, and questions its limits, by exploring how humans relate to animals. Rosenthal weaves an intricate pattern, combining the central narrative with many other voices – vets, farmers, breeders, trainers, a butcher – to produce a polyphonic composition full of fascinating and disconcerting insights.
Wise, precise, generous, To Leave with the Reindeer takes a clear-eyed look at the dilemmas of domestication, both human and animal, and the price we might pay to break free.
Over de auteur
Sophie Lewis translates from French and Portuguese. She has translated works by Stendhal, Verne, Marcel Aymé, Violette Leduc, Emmanuelle Pagano, Jean-Luc Raharimanana, Sheyla Smanioto and João Gilberto Noll, among others. Her translation of Emilie de Turckheim’s novel Héloïse is Bald was commended for the 2016 Scott Moncrieff Prize, and her translation of Noémi Lefebvre’s Blue Self-Portrait was shortlisted for the 2018 Republic of Consciousness Prize. In 2016 she launched Shadow Heroes, which designs and delivers workshops on translation for students at GCSE and above: www.shadowheroes.org.