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In the Book Notes<\/a> series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.<\/em><\/p>\n Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward<\/a>, Lauren Groff<\/a>, Bret Easton Ellis<\/a>, Celeste Ng<\/a>, T.C. Boyle<\/a>, Dana Spiotta<\/a>, Hanif Abdurraqib<\/a>, Andrew Sean Greer<\/a>, Roxane Gay,<\/a> and many others.<\/em><\/p>\n Katy Simpson Smith\u2019s novel The Maltese Version<\/a> is a compelling literary thriller immersed in the worlds of love and language.<\/em><\/p>\n The New York Times wrote of the book:<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cPhilosophical and disarmingly dishy . . . It\u2019s a book that\u2015for both its inventiveness and its many linguistic sleights of hand\u2015can renew our faith in the playful joys and critical capacity of fiction.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n In her own words, here is Katy Simpson Smith\u2019s Book Notes<\/a> music playlist for her novel The Maltese Version<\/a>:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Music, like literature, is a form of translation \u2013 it takes the roiling surge of feeling in the human breast and converts it into sound. I\u2019m not a writer who listens to music as I contemplate the blank page, but I do think a great deal about form, which means music and art are often in the back of my mind as I move characters through space, first with a blind instinct and then, in revision, with calculation and curiosity. Why is this person expressing themselves in a confused jumble of words, rather than a caress? What other modes are available? How might a painting unlock something otherwise unspoken? Can an electric guitar say something the voice can\u2019t? Why am I writing a novel<\/em>?<\/p>\n The Maltese Version<\/em> looks at relationships as yet another form, a way to communicate and \u2013 more realistically \u2013 to mis<\/em>communicate. Oh, poor us in love, trying to convey to the beloved the essence of who we are; if they just understood<\/em>, then surely some higher plane of harmony would be reached. Surely two people can share a language. How different is this from the act of literary translation, when a translator promises the audience that this new text is essentially<\/em> the same text as the original?<\/p>\n If we step back from the expectation of alignment, if we accept that one experience can never be translated with perfect accuracy, then a new possibility arises: that a translation can add<\/em> to the resonance of a thing in the world.<\/p>\n And so we come to Max and Leonie: two lovers floundering. He\u2019s a translator, she\u2019s a travel writer, and an assignment in Malta takes him away from their shared reality into a Mediterranean fantasy: a secluded villa, a seductive poet named Ana, a mass of words to be untangled. A forking of realities. These songs shine a sideways light on their predicaments\u2026<\/p>\n \n