Multilingual literature defies simple translation. Beginning with this insight, Brian Lennon examines the resistance multilingual literature offers to book publication itself. In readings of G. V. Desani’sAll about H. Hatterr, Anthony Burgess’sA Clockwork Orange, Christine Brooke-Rose’sBetween, Eva Hoffman’sLost in Translation, Emine Sevgi Özdamar’sMutterzunge, and Orhan Pamuk’sIstanbul, among other works, Lennon shows how nationalized literary print culture inverts the values of a transnational age, reminding us that works of literature are, above all, objects in motion.
Looking closely at the limit of both multilingual literary expression and the literary journalism, criticism, and scholarship that comments on multilingual work,In Babel’s Shadowpresents a critical reflection on the fate of literature in a world gripped by the crisis of globalization.
"In Babel’s Shadowis at once an important contribution to translation studies, a pointed intervention in current debates on world literature, and a searching meditation on the politics of literary study today. Through incisive readings of a wide range of multilingual writers and critics, Brian Lennon brilliantly unfolds the challenges that ‘strong plurilingualism’ poses to readers, publishers, and critics alike.In Babel’s Shadowwill make sobering—and inspiring—reading for anyone interested in the politics of literature in a multilingual world." —David Damrosch, Harvard University
Brian Lennon is assistant professor of English and comparative literature at Pennsylvania State University.
Preface, Acknowledgments, Introduction: Antinomies of Literature, 1. Language as Capital, 2. Translation Being Between, 3. Containment, 4. Language Memoir and Language Death, 5. The Other Other Literatul#)
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