Transcription

by Ben Lerner

Transcription is a literary novel by Ben Lerner that follows a middle‑aged American narrator on a series of trips—first to Providence, Rhode Island, to conduct what is billed as the final interview with his 90‑year‑old mentor Thomas, then to Madrid and Los Angeles. After dropping his smartphone in a hotel sink, the narrator is forced to rely on memory, reconstructing the conversation and confronting the limits of technology, recording, and truth. The narrative weaves together themes of fathers and sons, male friendship, rivalry, and the ways digital devices shape memory. Interlaced with references to quantum mechanics, eating disorders, the pandemic, and the 19th‑century glass artists Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka, the novel becomes a meditation on touch, inheritance, and the uncanny realism of storytelling. It has been praised as a "lightning flash of a novel" and won the Orwell Prize, also being named a Best Book of the Year (so far) by The New York Times.