Sophie Hardach is here to guide us through the strange and wonderful ways that humans have used languages throughout history. She takes us from the earliest Mesopotamian clay tablets and the ‘book cemeteries’ of medieval synagogues to the first sounds a child hears in their mother’s womb and their incredible capacity for language learning. Along the way, Hardach explores the role of trade in transmitting words across cultures and untangles riddles of hieroglyphics, cuneiform and the ancient scripts of Crete and Cyprus. This is a book about languages, the people who love them and the linguistic threads that connect us all.

‘Impeccably researched and engagingly presented… Sophie Hardach tells wonderful stories about words that have travelled vast distances in space and time to make English what it is’ David Bellos, author of Is That a Fish in Your Ear? Translation and the Meaning of Everything

Swimming for his life towards traffickers on the Italian shore, Selim enters a world where Kurdish refugees disguise themselves as tomatoes, dates of birth are a matter of opinion, and a residency permit is a ticket to paradise. When he ends up in a small town in Germany, Selim believes he is finally safe, until the law catches up with him and the clock starts ticking. Selim realises there is only one way to avoid deportation…

Fifteen years later, in a town hall in Paris, a Registrar receives an unsettling book: ‘The Registrar’s Manual for Detecting Forced Marriages’ fuels her suspicions surrounding an impending Kurdish wedding. She embarks on an investigation that will bring her uncomfortably close to an old acquaintance.

Written with real imaginative flair, heart and humour, The Registrar’s Manual for Detecting Forced Marriages introduces an unlikely hero who’ll prove impossible to forget, and a prodigious new talent in Sophie Hardach.