Katie Kitamura has loosely based the court featured in the story on the International Crimes Court. Kitamura says that she was first inspired with the idea for the novel in 2009 when she heard Charles Taylor, the former president of Liberia, testify in his defense at the ICC. Captivated by his egomaniacal methods of manipulating language to defend his heinous crimes, Kitamura found herself fascinated by the topic for years. In 2016, she visited the ICC to do further research and sat in on a trial of Laurent Gbagbo from the Ivory Coast. During the trial, her location in the court was on the same level as the interpreters, and Kitamura felt as though she were watching a play or a film. While she was immersed in the action, she simultaneously felt removed from it. Kitamura became fascinated by the interpreters' physically taxing and technically complex work. The interpretive nature of the job requires the interpreters to tolerate an uncomfortable level of intimacy with people who are accused of crimes against humanity. After meeting with an interpreter who shared his experience of developing a rapport with a political leader who was so accused, Kitamura finalized the idea for her story.