Sign-In
Cart
The Translator's Lie
Paperback
General FictionLiterary Fiction
Publisher Price: $24.99
ISBN13: 9789199182414
Publisher: Amara Lumen Publishing
Published: Jun 19 2026
Pages: 478
Weight: 1.40
Height: 1.06 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Noviari Saleh is good at translating.
She translates Korean into English, anger into diplomacy, exhaustion into politeness, and fear into the simple words everyone expects from her: I'm fine.
In Johor Bahru, she is a law graduate working far below her title, a teacher at night, and a daughter in a home where love often arrives as food, questions, and control. Then Daniel Lim enters her life from Singapore, offering her something that feels dangerously close to freedom: a better job, a rented room, and the possibility of becoming someone no one at home has already decided she should be.
But when Noviari finally crosses the border, the new life waiting for her is not as certain as promised.
With money running low, a job delayed, and her family believing she is safe, Noviari tells the lie that holds everything together: the job is good.
Yet the real lie is deeper.
She has spent years translating herself into what others could accept. Now, alone in a small Singapore room with a yellow curtain and a future that refuses to arrive neatly, Noviari must decide whether survival is worth another silence or whether the truth, however frightening, is the only place where she can finally begin.
The Translator's Lie is a tender and quietly powerful novel about family duty, women's hidden endurance, the danger of being rescued, and the courage it takes to belong to yourself.
1 different editions
Also available
Also from
Lumen, Amara
The Waiting Room: A novel about waiting, loneliness, and the people who forgot how to stay.
Lumen, Amara
Paperback
Also in
Literary Fiction
Elizabeth Spencer: Novels & Stories (Loa #344): The Voice at the Back Door / The Light in the Piazza / Knights and Dragons / Stories
Spencer, Elizabeth
Hardcover
James Fenimore Cooper: The Leatherstocking Tales Vol. 1 (Loa #26): The Pioneers / The Last of the Mohicans / The Prairie
Cooper, James Fenimore
Hardcover
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Stories (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)
Stevenson, Robert Louis
Paperback
Philip Roth: Novels 1973-1977 (Loa #165): The Great American Novel / My Life as a Man / The Professor of Desire
Roth, Philip
Hardcover
John Updike: Novels 1978-1984 (Loa #339): The Coup / Rabbit Is Rich / The Witches of Eastwick
Updike, John
Hardcover
The Patrick Melrose Novels: Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope, and Mother's Milk
St Aubyn, Edward
Paperback