Translating War

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xii

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2. Introduction

   • Angela Kershaw

   Pages 1-28

3. Zones of Hospitality

   • Angela Kershaw

   Pages 29-65

4. Translating the French Resistance in London and New York

   • Angela Kershaw

   Pages 67-117

5. The War Novel in the Post-War Years in France and Britain: Comparative Perspectives

   • Angela Kershaw

   Pages 119-164

6. The Goncourt Prize and the Second World War in France and Britain, 1945–51

   • Angela Kershaw

   Pages 165-214

7. Layers of Translation: Multilingualism in War and Holocaust Fiction

   • Angela Kershaw

   Pages 215-266

8. Conclusion

   • Angela Kershaw

   Pages 267-277

9. Back Matter

   Pages 279-293

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This book examines the role played by the international circulation of literature in constructing cultural memories of the Second World War. War writing has rarely been read from the point of view of translation even though war is by definition a multilingual event, and knowledge of the Second World War and the Holocaust is mediated through translated texts. Here, the author opens up this field of research through analysis of several important works of French war fiction and their English translations. The book examines the wartime publishing structures which facilitated literary exchanges across national borders, the strategies adopted by translators of war fiction, the relationships between translated war fiction and dominant national memories of the war, and questions of multilingualism in war writing. In doing so, it sheds new light on the political and ethical questions that arise when the trauma of war is represented in fiction and through translation. This engaging work will appeal to students and scholars of translation, cultural memory, war fiction and Holocaust writing.

• cultural memory
• literary history
• translational reading
• Translating war
• Cultural transfer
• transcultural memory
• Multilingualism
• Second World War
• Holocaust Fiction
• French war fiction
• Trauma
• prosthetic memory
• History of publishing
• literary mobility
• The War Novel
• Fiction and National Identity
• French resistance
• cultural translation
• French cultural history
• war studies

• Department of Modern Languages, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom

  Angela Kershaw

Angela Kershaw is Senior Lecturer in French Studies at the University of Birmingham, UK. She specialises in twentieth-century French literature, with particular interests in the inter-war and Second World War periods, translation studies and gender, and has published widely on these topics.

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