Abstract

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.

Michelle Woods is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for Translation and Textual Studies, Dublin City University. She has published on translation issues in Czech literature, Irish literature, and film. She is currently co-editing an Encyclopedia of Irish Literature in Translation.

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