Translating Milan Kundera

By (author) Michelle Woods

Publication date:

04 May 2006

Publisher

Multilingual Matters

Dimensions:

210x148mm
6x8"

ISBN-13: 9781853598838

Translating Milan Kundera uses new archival research to view the wider cultural scope of the translation issue involving the controversies surrounding Kundera’s translated novels. It focuses on the language of the novels, Kundera’s ‘lost’ works, writing as translation, interpretation, exile, censorship and the social responses to translated fiction in the Anglophone world.

This is a landmark publication in the area of translation, language and intercultural studies. Michelle Woods’ study highlights the fascinating history of the translation of Milan Kundera’s works and how perceptions of Kundera’s work in the English-speaking world have been crucially mediated by the process of translation. The work offers a detailed and highly insightful account of the reception of Kundera’s work in Anglophone countries and how the social, political and cultural contexts of writing can have a crucial influence on translation choices and strategies. Michelle Woods’ new book means that we now have to rewrite the history of East-West cultural relations in the closing decades of the last history. Michael Cronin