Though the practice of self-translation long predates modernity, it has found new forms of expression in the global literary market of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. The international renown of self-translating authors Samuel Beckett, Joseph Brodsky, and Vladimir Nabokov has offered motivation to a new generation of writers who actively translate themselves.
Intervening in recent debates in world literature and translation studies,Writing It Twiceestablishes the prominence and vitality of self-translation in contemporary French literature. Because of its intrinsic connection to multiple literary communities, self-translation prompts a reexamination of the aesthetics and politics of reading across national lines. Kippur argues that self-translated works should be understood as the paradigmatic example of world literature and, as such, crucial for interpreting the dynamics of literary circulation into and out of French.
Though the practice of self-translation long predates modernity, it has found new forms of expression in the global literary market of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. The international renown of self-translating authors Samuel Beckett, Joseph Brodsky, and Vladimir Nabokov has offered motivation to a new generation of writers who actively translate themselves.
"
Writing It Twiceis a timely, astute, and engaging study of several important modern and contemporary writers who have chosen to translate some (or almost all) of their important works into a second language, whether from their native tongue to their adopted language, or vice versa. It is elegantly written, cogently argued, and critically sophisticated... This is an original work by a sensitive and thoughtful critic." —Richard Golsan, author of
French Writers and the Politics of Complicity: Crises of Democracy in the 1940s and 1990s "Despite its slim spine, this bookl³*
![Writing It Twice: Self-Translation and the Making of a World Literature in French [Paperback]](/itemImage/2/0/7/0/2_5382670.jpg "Writing It Twice: Self-Translation and the Making of a World Literature in French [Paperback]")