Born translated : the contemporary novel in an age of world literature /

Walkowitz (English and comparative literature, Rutgers) observes a complex shift in the form and aims of the novel--a genre now often published in manifold tongues, with portions apparently in different languages, featuring narrators who address foreign readers or draw on a variety of visual or formal techniques. The result is that translation is treated not as secondary, incidental, or afterthought but as original. The author's term for this is born translated (a reference to born digital, used for work produced for the computer). Like Samuel Beckett--who published many of his seminal works in both English and French--the novelists studied here generally preempt translation, operating as both author and translator, and take translation as a principal and protective concern. Such strategies obviously challenge the global dominance of English. A modernist in every sense of the word, Walkowitz unearths social embeddedness and political solidarity in contemporary literature. Her innovative framework recasts literary history as a series of convergences and departures. Included among the dozens of recognized authors analyzed in these pages are J. M. Coetzee, Junot Diaz, Jonathan Safran Foer, Kazuo Ishiguro, Jamaica Kincaid, China Miéville, Walter Mosley, and Amy Waldman. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. --Raymond J. Cormier, emeritus, Longwood University