The Maltese Version - by Katy Simpson Smith (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A charged, delightfully offbeat novel of four women forging their way across time, place, and language in search of desire, power, and connection.

One day they were in love and the next, a manuscript appeared in his study, written in a language she didn't speak.

Leonie and Max are on separate but tangled paths. Now, she might be pregnant. And he's not answering her texts, off translating poetry from a language he seems barely to know.

Ana, the poet, moves through the house her father filled with his paintings, the house where her mother struggled to survive. Ana guards her poems closely. Can she let this foreign man take her words, her art, into his tongue? Does every partnership require some form of surrender?

Then Max blinks off the map, and Leonie asks Rhoda--an expert travel writer--to track him down in Malta, where a sun-baked wildness undermines Rhoda's sense of reality. What kind of caper is unfolding? And what will Rhoda do with this new version of herself?

Charged and mischievous, Katy Simpson Smith's The Maltese Version upends the stability of language, desire, and the ways we make meaning.

Review Quotes

A People Most-Anticipated Summer Read

"Philosophical and disarmingly dishy . . . It's a book that--for both its inventiveness and its many linguistic sleights of hand--can renew our faith in the playful joys and critical capacity of fiction."
--Lucy Ives, The New York Times Book Review

"The timeworn saying about there being two sides to every story gains new dimension in this probing novel . . . Smith asks, How do we make meaning, and how do we convey it?"
--The New Yorker

"Her sensual, linguistically playful novel is a tale of literary devotion . . . A deep love of language pulses through Ms. Smith's novel . . . [she] offers her own translation of the strange and specific vocabulary of heartache."
--Heller McAlpin, The Wall Street Journal

"Katy Simpson Smith just can't help it: whether she's writing a romance, a fantasy, a mystery or a thriller, the result is always going to be a fantastically complex, gorgeously written literary novel, and we are so lucky to get to read whatever it is she writes."
--Tracy Carr, Mississippi Clarion Ledger

"[A] literary exploration of human connection and the art of translation."
--Suzanne Van Atten, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"A beautifully tangled novel"
--Caroline Reilly, Forbes

"[Smith] brilliantly illustrates the many imperfect ways in which people try to comprehend one another . . . Focusing a vigilant eye on women's inner complexities, [she] presents a spirited, curious, and linguistically adept novel that should thrill armchair travelers and readers of intellectual literary fiction."
-- Sarah Johnson, Booklist (starred review)

"A stimulating and slippery anti-detective novel . . . This intelligent and entertaining tale provides readers with much to ponder."
--Publisher's Weekly

"Playful . . . The Maltese Version keeps the reader turning pages as it roams this Mediterranean island setting, and with its often funny narration, brings the story to a satisfying, surprising conclusion."
--Sarah McCraw Crow, BookPage

"A fascinating ode to language, with all its pleasures and pitfalls. Mysterious, reflective, strange, and full of wonder. I couldn't put it down."
--Bruna Dantas Lobato, author of Blue Light Hours

"Katy Simpson Smith playfully turns the Mediterranean psychological thriller on its head with this lush, finely textured, riveting dive into lives tangled by language and time. The Maltese Version is irresistible."
--Téa Obreht, author of The Morningside

"The Maltese Version whisked me to places I did not expect. What a pleasurable and thrilling experience, to live inside of Katy Simpson Smith's assured and gorgeous vision: to be led into stony landscapes and the Mediterranean Sea as readily as profound questions about love, language, translation, and desire. Breathtaking, singular, and stunning--this is a book that you cannot read without emerging transformed."
--Rachel Khong, author of Real Americans

About the Author