Unlike the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize , the American Best Translated Book Award has had an even gender split of winners for its fiction award, with four female writers winning in the eight years of its existence. The central character is Katri Kling, an independent woman who suffers no fools, gladly or otherwise. Living in a small, isolated hamlet, her only companions are her rather simple brother Mats and a dog with no name, a creature more akin to a wolf.
Over the course of a few weeks, Katri uses her blunt honesty to make herself indispensable to the old woman, and eventually the siblings move into the house. The reader is soon led to suspect an ulterior motive for her actions; however, as the relationship grows, we wonder who exactly is using whom…. The True Deceiver is an excellent book, short, plainly written, yet brutal in its impact at times. The game could continue, and now she could fight with her own weapons.
Which she believed were pure. The two main characters are very different people. One is a blunt-spoken young woman with a head for numbers; the other is a frail old dear adrift from the world, drawing pictures of rabbits on the forest floor Beatrix Potter in the snow….
Anna has no head for business and would rather be cheated than drawn into conflict, content to sign away her rights for peanuts. What follows is a battle of wills, a battle neither Katri nor Anna are fully aware is taking place. And of course sometimes we hardly know ourselves.
In the heat of the silent battle, both struggle to articulate, even to themselves, what they really want. In the hands of another lesser writer, The True Deceiver could have been developed into a touching drama. Sometimes, despite our best intentions to get along with those around us, deception is the only way to get ahead…. Hard to say much as this is a book by her I have yet to read.
