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Translations

by Jumaana Abdu

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Narrator Violette Ayad

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Length 12 hours 48 minutes

Language English

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Bookseller recommendation

“This tender novel examines what it means to value privacy above all else, and how to recover from trauma without having to share your secrets with the world. Aliyah has run away from her life in Sydney with her young daughter Sakina to make a fresh start in a small town, the only link to which is an old school friend, Hana. The plan is to build a self-sufficient garden on their remote property and devote themselves to each other and God. But to establish their paradise, they must enlist the help of quiet, dignified Shep, a Palestinian refugee, and the local imam, and the world just keeps knocking on their door. Translations is a deeply felt novel, told in swirling, evocative language. Abdu has a particular knack for unusual metaphors, which liven the prose and distill precise images of the characters and their behaviour. The smooth tone and skilful accents of the narrator enrich the text and have stayed with me, as have the many ideas that Abdu contemplates in this novel: faith, sovereignty, ownership, the limits of language, our responsibilities and duties to one another. Nothing is spelled out, everything happens between the lines, but if you scratch the surface there is much to digest.”
— Annie • Mostly Books

Summary
About the author
About the narrator

Amid a series of personal disasters, Aliyah and her daughter, Sakina, retreat to rural New South Wales to make a new life. Aliyah manages to secure a run-down property and hires a farmhand, Shep, an extremely private Palestinian man and the region's imam.

During a storm, she drives past the town's river and happens upon a childhood friend, Hana, who has been living a life of desperation. Aliyah takes her in and tries to navigate the indefinable relationships between both Hana and her farmhand. Tensions rise as Aliyah's growing bond with Shep strains her devotion to Hana.

Finally, all are thrown together for a reckoning alongside Hana's brother, Hashim, and Aliyah's confidante, Billie - a local Kamilaroi midwife she met working at the hospital - while bushfires rage around them.

Fiction

Jumaana Abdu (Author)
Jumaana Abdu is a Dal Stivens Award winner and an alumnus of the Wheeler Centre Next Chapter program. Her work features in Thyme Travellers (Roseway Publishing), an international anthology of Palestinian speculative fiction. She has been published elsewhere in Kill Your Darlings, Westerly, Griffith Review, Meanjin, Liminal, Overland, Debris and New Australian Fiction 2024. During the day, she is a medical doctor.

Violette Ayad (Reader)
Violette is a 2017 NIDA graduate with a Batchelor of Fine Arts in Acting.
Her theatre credits include Oil (Sydney Theatre Co), Son of Byblos (25a Belvoir), Oil (Black Swan Theatre Co), Nearer the Gods (Ensemble Theatre), Elektra/Orestes (Hive Collective) Where the Streets had a Name (Monkey Baa) and The Players national tour (Bell Shakespeare). Other professional work includes Mercury Poisoning (KXT Broadway), Coram Boy (KXT), Revolt She Said. Revolt. Again, as well as new Australian plays Blame Traffic and The House at Boundary Road Liverpool, all at The Old 505 Theatre. Whilst at NIDA she appeared in productions of The Show that Smells, Fraternal, The Hypochondriac, Woyzeck, Twelfth Night and Sportsplay. Screen work includes films Hero, Seeds of God, Breaking Plates and Nekrotronic as well as a role in television series Prosper (STAN). Violette received the Fringe World Emerging Artist Award in her hometown of Perth for her performance in the one-woman show My Father's World (2014). She is also a member of The Equity Diversity committee.