Jellyfish Have No Ears

A captivating experiment on the beauty and elusiveness of meaning, sound and language * TLS *Brilliant … As an early-years recipient of a cochlear implant himself, Jeffrey Zuckerman has summoned his own experiences in the service of this masterful translation from Rosenfeld’s French * Telegraph *A profound, sometimes playful, meditation on deafness and the impact sensory loss has on human relationships * Financial Times *Superb, surprising … A work of spirited imagination … Expertly translated by Jeffrey Zuckerman * Irish Times *Will a cochlear implant change the way one unforgettable young woman experiences the world? Adèle Rosenfeld’s narrator grapples with this question as she navigates work, love, and her own unruly imagination. In lush, startling prose, made vivid by Jeffrey Zuckerman’s translation, her agonizing choice becomes relevant to us all – Nell Freudenberger“Unexpectedly, Adèle Rosenfeld’s marvellous novel turns out to be about sounds: fans whirring, sneakers squeaking, cars honking, motorcycles thrumming, but most of all voices making noises that are frustratingly but fascinatingly misunderstood. In Jeffrey Zuckerman’s translation, this account of imperfect hearing will take its readers by surprise and teach them new ways of listening – Anne FadimanEvery mishearing spawns a fiction: the hearer invents words, ideas, and stories to fill in the breaks in communication. Adèle Rosenfeld’s brilliant novel rigorously pursues the literary potential of this idea, as her narrator navigates an alternately painful, playful, and hallucinatory linguistic universe that unspools from the growing gaps in her hearing. Jeffrey Zuckerman’s marvellous translation of Jellyfish Have No Ears is a complex, funny, and deeply valuable chronicle of ‘someone uprooted from language’ as she wrestles with the alienation, ambiguity, denial, and possibility that emerge from her new states of being – Andrew Leland

Born in Paris in 1986, Adele Rosenfeld has worked in publishing for the last ten years. Alongside her work, she has developed a number of writing projects. Her first novel, Jellyfish Have No Ears, was shortlisted for the prestigious Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman 2022.