Language in The Map of Love serves as a metaphor for what can and can’t be communicated.

The shape of languages—in life as in this novel—often reflects foundational cultural ideas and philosophies, and some words simply cannot be fully translated between languages: the ideas they express are just too specific to a place or a people. Even beyond this difficulty, all language in its inherent metaphoricity (the semiotics of Lacan’s signifier and signified) is at some level struggling to recreate what can’t be fully recreated—that is to say, reality.

All the characters in the book run up against the frustrations and joys of translation. Anna and Sharif, for instance, must communicate their deep emotions in French, a language that is at root alien to them both. This very alienness serves as a meeting-place for them: in their love as in their language, they are both inhabitants of a whole new country, both familiar and new. Their shared world is in territory that’s a little strange to them both. This understanding of language reflects the book’s whole ideal of cross-cultural connection (and human connection), not as homogenization, but as the sharing and holding together of differences.