Writing It Twice: Self-Translation and the Making of a World Literature in 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. Intervening in recent debates in world literature and translation studies, Writing It Twice establishes 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.

About the Author :
Sara Kippur is an assistant professor of language and culture studies at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, USA.

Review :
"Sara Kippur makes a lively and persuasive case for self-translation as an activity with critical edge. World literature and translation studies won't be the same: they will be all the richer for taking account of doubled writing." --Sherry Simon, Concordia University "Writing It Twice is 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 book makes a huge contribution to self-translation and translingual studies, and challenges us to think about world literature from the perspective of its capacity for 'engaging distinct language publics' (p. 128) rather than according to its presence within a literary system beyond that of its original culture." --The French Review "The connections Kippur establishes between autobiographical or life-writing, self-translation, and world literatures make [Writing It Twice] an excellent resource for scholars in these fields... [and] even readers approaching the topic of self-translation for the first time." --Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association "If, according to the Italian adage, translation is betrayal, autotranslation is a peculiar form of self-abuse. However, Writing It Twice, Sara Kippur's scintillating contribution to the burgeoning field of translation studies, makes a compelling case for the centrality of translation to the existence and performance of world literature. And she demonstrates how authors who recreate their texts in another language offer tonic challenges to assumptions about originality, authenticity, and the boundaries between author and text. S.Y. Abramovitch, André Brink, Isak Dinesen, Ariel Dorfman, and Vladimir Nabokov are illustrious examples of self-translators, but Kippur chooses to focus on writers who work in and out of French, often idealized as a "universal" language. Her lambent case studies of Nancy Huston, Raymond Federman, Jorge Semprun, and Hector Bianciotti constitute vibrant and essential reading for anyone interested in the fertile nexus of language, literature, culture, and self." --Steven G. Kellman, Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Texas at San Antonio and author of The Translingual Imagination