The Interpreter (novel)

For the 1965 novel by Wole Soyinka, see The Interpreters (novel).

The Interpreter is a 2003 murder mystery novel by Suki Kim. A twenty-nine-year-old Korean American court interpreter, Suzy Park, is startled to discover during a case that her parents' homicide was not random.

The Interpreter

Author	Suki Kim
Language	English
Genre	Novel
Publisher	Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Publication date	2003
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print (Paperback)
Pages	464 pp (first edition, paperback)
ISBN	978-0-312-42224-0
OCLC	606927844

Summary

Korean American Suzy Park works as a court interpreter for the New York City courts. She has had two rocky relationships with married men, worked a series of unsatisfying jobs, and cut ties with her family before her parents were shot in an unsolved double murder. During a court case, she discovers that her parents were not murdered by random violence, as the police had indicated, but instead had been shot by political enemies. The discovery motivates Park to investigate what really happened.

Awards and nomination

• PEN/Beyond Margins Award
• Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award
• Runner-up for the PEN/Hemingway Prize

Translations

• Dutch: Thera Idema [translator] (2003), De tolk, Amsterdam: Contact, ISBN 978-90-254-1446-7, OCLC 66763484 {{citation}}: |author= has generic name (help)
• French: Marie Boudewyn [translator] (2004), L'interprète : roman, Paris: Calmann-Lévy, ISBN 978-2-7021-3495-5, OCLC 470148483 {{citation}}: |author= has generic name (help)
• Korean: Yi Eum-seon [이은선, translator] (2005), 통역사 [Tongyeoksa], 황금가지 [Hwanggeum Gaji], ISBN 978-89-8273-635-3, OCLC 62162491 {{citation}}: |author= has generic name (help)
• Japanese: Kunishige Junji [國重純二, translator] (2007), Tsūyaku/Intāpuritā 通訳/インタープリター, 英社 [Shūeisha], ISBN 978-4-08-773414-0, OCLC 675929390 {{citation}}: |author= has generic name (help)

Sources

• Interview: Suki Kim and the Interpreter

Further reading

• Kim, Jini H. (2006), From the womb of Han: transferential melancholia in Suki Kim's The Interpreter and Chang-Rae Lee's Native Speaker, M.A. Thesis, Georgetown University, OCLC 84926433