Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi’s debut, The Centre, is a dark, funny novel that taps into broader questions of language, politics, history, science, and womanhood in contemporary times. It follows Anisa Ellahi, a transcriber of Bollywood films for Netflix who is in her 30s as she bemoans the pointlessness of her life. She was born and raised in Karachi in a well-to-do family. She gets by just fine with her job in the UK because she knows she can rely on her folks back home to fill in the financial gaps.
However, her spirits are reaching an end to such complacency. She feels distanced from her native language – Urdu and her aspirations of becoming a translator. She is lonely – romantically and sexually – and craves a partner beyond her closest friend Naima.
The loneliness of language
Anisa bumps into Adam at a translation studies conference. Gradually, she discovers he knows more than ten languages and starts to feel ashamed of herself. Anisa deals with this by showing no interest beyond sexual gratification from Adam, which is a struggle in itself. He comes from a working-class background and has a series of childhood insecurities making it difficult for him to adjust to Anisa’s flighty, entitled personality.