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Mistranslation
Not yet published
Expected 22 Sep 26In upstate New York in 2001, nine-year-old twins Sabina and Camilla spend the summer weathering the moods of their erratic mother while finding themselves pulled toward diverging interests: Sabina into the mystery of their absent French father and Camilla into burgeoning popularity. But their lives are shaken up by the arrival of an Arab French family across the street. Thrilled by what she sees as a link to the country of her origins, Sabina attempts to befriend the family’s son, Khalil, and is rebuffed for reasons she doesn’t understand.
Yet as the twins and Khalil come of age, they are drawn into a tense and ever-shifting triangular dynamic. As Sabina strives to find her father and make sense of her mother, as Camilla confronts whether the power she held in youth translates to adulthood, and as Khalil reckons with the psychological fallout of a family tragedy, their paths converge in ways both surprising and inevitable. Bookended by events with global resonance, Mistranslation is a continent-spanning chronicle of family, inheritance, and the reverberations of the choices we do―or don’t―make.
Yet as the twins and Khalil come of age, they are drawn into a tense and ever-shifting triangular dynamic. As Sabina strives to find her father and make sense of her mother, as Camilla confronts whether the power she held in youth translates to adulthood, and as Khalil reckons with the psychological fallout of a family tragedy, their paths converge in ways both surprising and inevitable. Bookended by events with global resonance, Mistranslation is a continent-spanning chronicle of family, inheritance, and the reverberations of the choices we do―or don’t―make.
334 pages, Paperback
Expected publication September 22, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
July 15, 2026
Review of an ARC Provided by Netgalley.
I absolutely love this structure of books that are spanning decades and complicated relationships over that so this is really up my street. Its a very precise exploration of the twins relationship with eachother, their mother and khalil.
The way the prose alternates between khalil, camilla and sabine so effortlessly is remarkable. moss writes excellently but not too flashy or overstated which is something i really appreciate.
the pacing sometimes isnt that even, but for me this was a quality i enjoyed as there were few parts of the novel that i found predictable. in a book that's mostly about interpersonal dynamics theres also some really lovely setting descriptions especially when they go to Lyon. I did unfortunately hate Bryn throughout and it only got worse.
its quite restrained but i think this definitely helped me as the reader develop that attachment and empathy for the characters in those gaps. i've also just realised this is Moss' debut which I would not have guessed at all!!
I absolutely love this structure of books that are spanning decades and complicated relationships over that so this is really up my street. Its a very precise exploration of the twins relationship with eachother, their mother and khalil.
The way the prose alternates between khalil, camilla and sabine so effortlessly is remarkable. moss writes excellently but not too flashy or overstated which is something i really appreciate.
the pacing sometimes isnt that even, but for me this was a quality i enjoyed as there were few parts of the novel that i found predictable. in a book that's mostly about interpersonal dynamics theres also some really lovely setting descriptions especially when they go to Lyon. I did unfortunately hate Bryn throughout and it only got worse.
its quite restrained but i think this definitely helped me as the reader develop that attachment and empathy for the characters in those gaps. i've also just realised this is Moss' debut which I would not have guessed at all!!
July 8, 2026
This book is amazing and special, more so if your
siblings are twins...
I thoroughly enjoyed the book, even with some
slow parts, likely,to catch all of the characters.
There is a lot to u pack here, and I went in cold.
I absolutely recommend picking the book up,
settling in, and becoming part of the family.
You won't be disappointed.
My thanks to the folks at Iowa University
Press, via NetGalley for the copy of the
book for review purposes.
siblings are twins...
I thoroughly enjoyed the book, even with some
slow parts, likely,to catch all of the characters.
There is a lot to u pack here, and I went in cold.
I absolutely recommend picking the book up,
settling in, and becoming part of the family.
You won't be disappointed.
My thanks to the folks at Iowa University
Press, via NetGalley for the copy of the
book for review purposes.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
What makes Mistranslation so compelling is not its scope, but its precision. Beneath the novel’s movement across time and geography lies a sustained inquiry into how meaning is altered — not only between languages, but between people who believe they are speaking the same emotional truth.
The novel is particularly attentive to the ways childhood perception calcifies into adult misunderstanding. Sabina, Camilla, and Khalil are not simply characters shaped by circumstance; they are each, in different ways, constrained by the interpretive frameworks they develop early in life. What initially reads as a story of divergence gradually reveals itself as a study of how connection can persist even through profound misreading.
One of the novel’s quiet strengths is its refusal to treat clarity as resolution. Instead, ambiguity becomes structural. Moments that might traditionally be explained or reconciled are allowed to remain slightly misaligned, echoing the book’s larger concern with translation as an inherently imperfect act. This creates a narrative texture that feels deliberate rather than elusive — careful in what it chooses not to resolve.
I was especially struck by the way the novel handles intimacy. Relationships here are never stable positions but shifting alignments of proximity and distance. Desire, friendship, loyalty, and resentment often occupy the same space, making the emotional landscape feel both precise and unstable. The triangular dynamic at the center of the novel is less a plot device than a way of exposing how interpretation itself becomes a form of possession.
The prose is controlled and quietly luminous, often doing its most important work in what it withholds. There is a confidence in allowing silence, contradiction, and temporal disjunction to carry meaning without over-explanation. This restraint gives the novel its intellectual and emotional weight.
What lingers most is the sense that every act of understanding is partial, and every attempt at coherence carries the residue of something lost in transmission. The novel does not suggest that translation is failure, but that it is the condition through which all relationships must be lived.
Readers drawn to literary fiction that engages with memory, diaspora, psychological inheritance, and the instability of interpretation will find this deeply rewarding.
Mistranslation ultimately understands that what connects us is not perfect understanding, but the willingness to remain inside what cannot be fully said.
The novel is particularly attentive to the ways childhood perception calcifies into adult misunderstanding. Sabina, Camilla, and Khalil are not simply characters shaped by circumstance; they are each, in different ways, constrained by the interpretive frameworks they develop early in life. What initially reads as a story of divergence gradually reveals itself as a study of how connection can persist even through profound misreading.
One of the novel’s quiet strengths is its refusal to treat clarity as resolution. Instead, ambiguity becomes structural. Moments that might traditionally be explained or reconciled are allowed to remain slightly misaligned, echoing the book’s larger concern with translation as an inherently imperfect act. This creates a narrative texture that feels deliberate rather than elusive — careful in what it chooses not to resolve.
I was especially struck by the way the novel handles intimacy. Relationships here are never stable positions but shifting alignments of proximity and distance. Desire, friendship, loyalty, and resentment often occupy the same space, making the emotional landscape feel both precise and unstable. The triangular dynamic at the center of the novel is less a plot device than a way of exposing how interpretation itself becomes a form of possession.
The prose is controlled and quietly luminous, often doing its most important work in what it withholds. There is a confidence in allowing silence, contradiction, and temporal disjunction to carry meaning without over-explanation. This restraint gives the novel its intellectual and emotional weight.
What lingers most is the sense that every act of understanding is partial, and every attempt at coherence carries the residue of something lost in transmission. The novel does not suggest that translation is failure, but that it is the condition through which all relationships must be lived.
Readers drawn to literary fiction that engages with memory, diaspora, psychological inheritance, and the instability of interpretation will find this deeply rewarding.
Mistranslation ultimately understands that what connects us is not perfect understanding, but the willingness to remain inside what cannot be fully said.
Review of advance copy received from Author
Thank you to Madeleine Moss and University of Iowa Press for this e-arc!
Mistranslation follows the winding stories of two twin sisters, Sabina and Camilla, and Khalil, an Algerian French boy who moves in across the street. The dynamics of the twins evolve through the years, with Camilla more preoccupied with theatre dreams and social life, while Sabina ruminates over the identity of their absent father. Both, though, are united as they navigate their relationship with their erratic, at times careless mother. Khalil, all the while, is preoccupied with political aspirations and grieves the unsolved loss of a family member.
Throughout these chapters is a story titled “Work in Progress,” following a student at a French university as she enters into an affair with her married professor. As you read, you become increasingly aware of how this ties into the main narrative until the end, where it ties into the story’s resolution.
What I enjoyed the most about this was how real these characters felt. While some had loud or even abrasive personalities, they feel very much like people you could meet going about your day. An absent, avoidant father who is unwilling to take responsibility. A daughter who holds out hope for connection. Her sister with dreams larger than she may have access to. None of these are heroes’ journeys. They’re the stories of imperfect people who hurt each other, and who simply have to find a way to cope with everything life throws at them.
Moss’s writing is understated and powerful in the way that it allows you to sit with these characters and their decisions. The way she plays with language, by adding French throughout the story and through the way characters interact with language, reflects their attitudes and sense of belonging.
This is a strong debut and a great read for anyone who loves a really character-driven story!
Mistranslation follows the winding stories of two twin sisters, Sabina and Camilla, and Khalil, an Algerian French boy who moves in across the street. The dynamics of the twins evolve through the years, with Camilla more preoccupied with theatre dreams and social life, while Sabina ruminates over the identity of their absent father. Both, though, are united as they navigate their relationship with their erratic, at times careless mother. Khalil, all the while, is preoccupied with political aspirations and grieves the unsolved loss of a family member.
Throughout these chapters is a story titled “Work in Progress,” following a student at a French university as she enters into an affair with her married professor. As you read, you become increasingly aware of how this ties into the main narrative until the end, where it ties into the story’s resolution.
What I enjoyed the most about this was how real these characters felt. While some had loud or even abrasive personalities, they feel very much like people you could meet going about your day. An absent, avoidant father who is unwilling to take responsibility. A daughter who holds out hope for connection. Her sister with dreams larger than she may have access to. None of these are heroes’ journeys. They’re the stories of imperfect people who hurt each other, and who simply have to find a way to cope with everything life throws at them.
Moss’s writing is understated and powerful in the way that it allows you to sit with these characters and their decisions. The way she plays with language, by adding French throughout the story and through the way characters interact with language, reflects their attitudes and sense of belonging.
This is a strong debut and a great read for anyone who loves a really character-driven story!
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
“Mistranslation” really snuck up on me so it follows these twin sisters, Sabina and Camilla, growing up in upstate New York with their erratic mother and a mysterious no where to be found French father. But when an Arab-French family moves in across the street, Sabina basically latches onto their son, Khalil, trying to find a connection to her own roots. What follows is a multi-decade, multi-POV character study that spans from US to France, exploring how the things we completely misinterpret as kids end up ruining (or shaping) our adulthoods.
What I loved most was the prose. Sheesh can Madeleine Moss write! I mean to have the book alternate between Sabina, Camilla, and Khalil, and each voice feels distinct to their own characters. Sabina’s obsession with her heritage and her need to find out who she is; is relatable, and Khalil’s being distant and guardy opens your eyes more once you learn his family’s backstory. Also, as someone who loves travel in books, the section detailing Lyon, France was immerseful.
The only downside I saw about this book was that it is slow. Because it spans so many years and between three different perspectives, the pacing lags just a bit in the middle before it all starts colliding. But If you love character-driven literary fiction, messy family dynamics, and stories about grief and culture intertwine, absolutely add this book to your TBR. It’s an incredibly impressive debut!
Thank you to the University of Iowa Press and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review! #Mistranslation #NetGalley
What I loved most was the prose. Sheesh can Madeleine Moss write! I mean to have the book alternate between Sabina, Camilla, and Khalil, and each voice feels distinct to their own characters. Sabina’s obsession with her heritage and her need to find out who she is; is relatable, and Khalil’s being distant and guardy opens your eyes more once you learn his family’s backstory. Also, as someone who loves travel in books, the section detailing Lyon, France was immerseful.
The only downside I saw about this book was that it is slow. Because it spans so many years and between three different perspectives, the pacing lags just a bit in the middle before it all starts colliding. But If you love character-driven literary fiction, messy family dynamics, and stories about grief and culture intertwine, absolutely add this book to your TBR. It’s an incredibly impressive debut!
Thank you to the University of Iowa Press and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review! #Mistranslation #NetGalley
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
A huge thank you to NetGalley for this digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.
[title]: mistranslation
[author]: madeline moss
[rating]: ✩✩✩
------------------- ⋆｡˚ ☁︎ ˚｡⋆｡˚☾˚｡⋆ --------------------
i’m still sitting with the last page, trying to find where this story actually settles in my mind.
madeline moss' debut builds a continent-spanning narrative out of twin sisters, a childhood neighbor, and the heavy, quiet spaces left behind by a missing father and a family tragedy. there is a melancholic atmosphere to the prose, and it captures the way a single choice ripples through an entire family tree, leaving you with that familiar, hollow ache of missed timing. but at times, the emotional weight feels forced rather than purposeful, like the book is too careful with its own edges, choosing to skim the surface of grief rather than letting you sink fully into it. it's a lovely, textured attempt at exploring the distance between what we mean and what we actually say, but the story ultimately gets lost in its own slow pacing. a pacing that breaks and trips just as you’re starting to find your footing inside the atmosphere. additionally, the story circles its own tragedies with so much restraint that the emotional weight never fully lands in your chest. it’s not a perfect book, and it leaves you slightly stranded in the intervals, but there is still something tender and broken here that is worth looking at.
[title]: mistranslation
[author]: madeline moss
[rating]: ✩✩✩
------------------- ⋆｡˚ ☁︎ ˚｡⋆｡˚☾˚｡⋆ --------------------
i’m still sitting with the last page, trying to find where this story actually settles in my mind.
madeline moss' debut builds a continent-spanning narrative out of twin sisters, a childhood neighbor, and the heavy, quiet spaces left behind by a missing father and a family tragedy. there is a melancholic atmosphere to the prose, and it captures the way a single choice ripples through an entire family tree, leaving you with that familiar, hollow ache of missed timing. but at times, the emotional weight feels forced rather than purposeful, like the book is too careful with its own edges, choosing to skim the surface of grief rather than letting you sink fully into it. it's a lovely, textured attempt at exploring the distance between what we mean and what we actually say, but the story ultimately gets lost in its own slow pacing. a pacing that breaks and trips just as you’re starting to find your footing inside the atmosphere. additionally, the story circles its own tragedies with so much restraint that the emotional weight never fully lands in your chest. it’s not a perfect book, and it leaves you slightly stranded in the intervals, but there is still something tender and broken here that is worth looking at.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
Madeleine Moss’s debut novel follows twin sisters growing up in a small upstate New York town, their eccentric single mother, and the Arab French boy whose arrival reshapes the sisters’ lives over the next two decades. It’s a richly observed portrait of sibling rivalry, misread intentions, and the ways people can love one another deeply while never quite speaking the same emotional language. Threaded throughout are enigmatic chapters titled “Work in Progress,” centered on an affair between a professor and an American student at a French university. Their connection to the main narrative stays elusive until the final, satisfying pages.
Madeleine Moss writes with grace and restraint, revealing her three central characters, contradictions intact. The middle portion unfolds at an unhurried pace yet the characters are so vividly drawn that I was happy to stay with them.
Mistranslation reminds me that there are exceptional novels waiting to be discovered outside the big publishing houses. Many thanks to the author and publisher for providing me with an advance review copy.
Madeleine Moss writes with grace and restraint, revealing her three central characters, contradictions intact. The middle portion unfolds at an unhurried pace yet the characters are so vividly drawn that I was happy to stay with them.
Mistranslation reminds me that there are exceptional novels waiting to be discovered outside the big publishing houses. Many thanks to the author and publisher for providing me with an advance review copy.
Review of advance copy received from Author
Thank you to the author and to the University of Iowa Press for the eARC of Mistranslation!
I devoured this book in two days. It’s compelling, political, sexy, and subtle. I recommend it to fans of family-centric literary fiction.
Sabina and Camilla are twins growing up in a suburb of NYC. Their mom is around but uninvolved and their dad is a mysterious Frenchman from her past. The girls come of age alongside their neighbor Kahlil, whose involvement in their family creates a triangular dynamic that morphs across 20 years and 2 continents. Interspersed in this narrative is another story of a student-professor affair that ends up relating to the twins in crucial ways.
Mistranslation explores the trustworthiness of memory, sibling loyalty, micro aggressions, the seeming futility of being a socialist in a capitalist world, pick-me girls, French stereotypes, American stereotypes, the power of speaking multiple languages, sex, sex work, virginity, Islam, atheism, political activism, 9/11, suburbia, jealousy, and regret. The author is clearly familiar with the settings and dynamics that she writes about. The story feels lived-in and specific. The characters are all given depth and autonomy. The writing is sharp and deliberate. I highly encourage you to check this one out when it’s published on 9/22!
I devoured this book in two days. It’s compelling, political, sexy, and subtle. I recommend it to fans of family-centric literary fiction.
Sabina and Camilla are twins growing up in a suburb of NYC. Their mom is around but uninvolved and their dad is a mysterious Frenchman from her past. The girls come of age alongside their neighbor Kahlil, whose involvement in their family creates a triangular dynamic that morphs across 20 years and 2 continents. Interspersed in this narrative is another story of a student-professor affair that ends up relating to the twins in crucial ways.
Mistranslation explores the trustworthiness of memory, sibling loyalty, micro aggressions, the seeming futility of being a socialist in a capitalist world, pick-me girls, French stereotypes, American stereotypes, the power of speaking multiple languages, sex, sex work, virginity, Islam, atheism, political activism, 9/11, suburbia, jealousy, and regret. The author is clearly familiar with the settings and dynamics that she writes about. The story feels lived-in and specific. The characters are all given depth and autonomy. The writing is sharp and deliberate. I highly encourage you to check this one out when it’s published on 9/22!
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews