Thomas Mann’s distinguished translator-in-chief, John E Woods, once lamented that “Translation is an impossibility. Every language is unique to itself. So a translator tackles that impossibility anew with every author, with every sentence for that matter.” Countless other translations open with quasi-apologies like this, thinly-veiled confessions that in translation, one can only ever strive for the least worst rendering. These appeals are all too understandable. The translator’s unenviable role is to transfigure a text from one form into another—retaining some intangible essence—all the while remaining invisible. All the same, it is hard to imagine this sort of appeal from Max Lawton. Lawton is anything but invisible, having amassed an impressive literary profile in his short career.