From Blamage Books
***THIS IS A PREORDER***
Will ship 3/15/2025
A new short story collection from Meghan Lamb, author of Coward, and Failure to Thrive.
Mirror Translation details three uncanny encounters between Americans abroad and their Eastern European mirrors. A foreign exchange student develops a disturbing dependency on her friend for hire. A couple becomes obsessed with a mysterious stripper. A young backpacker transitions from an unhealthy attachment to her ex-boyfriend to a bizarre, potential entrapment with a rural family. With their slow-building, atmospheric explorations, and their patiently exposing psychological striptease, these stories beckon the reader toward strange resemblances, refractions, and transferences of selfhood, posing the question: Who—and what—is the foreigner (and who decides)?.
“Lamb blends Borges, Bradbury, and Barker into a strange and erotic dark fantasy, wherein an anonymous Eastern European country becomes a maze of identity. The fear Lamb cultivates here is not the paranoia of invasion from outside, but of genuine recognition—the terrible realization that you yourself are a doppelganger; that you are no longer the person you thought you were.”
— B.R. Yeager, author of Burn You the Fuck Alive and Negative Space
“Meghan Lamb’s Mirror Translation is a collection of stories about alienation masquerading as a travelogue, where the “American in Europe” trope is transformed into Pinter-esque realizations of primal angst and sensuality. The “other” in these cases is just what we are when untethered from a habitual context. Remarkable in its atmosphere of dissonance and humility.”
— Charlene Elsby, author of Violent Faculties and The Devil Thinks I’m Pretty
“The first thing that struck me about Mirror Translation is the physicality of the text. I felt this stuff in my guts - my flesh squirmed. Meghan Lamb’s writing is skilled and intuitive and knows just how to burrow into your imagination in the richest of ways. The unique ideas and voice used in Mirror Translation allows for real horrors to manifest viscerally. You’re in there, feeling every moment. It’s a rush and an absolute thrill.”
—Thomas Moore, author of Your Dreams and Forever
100 pages, perfect bound with cover and interior paintings by Shannon Hozinec.
First edition, print run of 100