The Mysteries of Translation in “Stranger Fictions”
Europe is the center of the world and has the literature to prove it. Or is it? Arabic and comparative literature scholar Rebecca C. Johnson makes a different argument in Stranger Fictions.
Rebecca C. Johnson
Rebecca C. Johnson is Associate Professor of English and the Humanities at Northwestern University, with a specialization in modern Arabic literature and translation studies, and is Associate Editor of the Journal of Arabic Literature. Though a native of California, she has lived and studied in Cairo, New York, and Paris before settling in Chicago. Her academic work has appeared or is forthcoming in NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, Middle Eastern Literatures, Comparative Literature, The International Journal of Middle East Studies, and Modern Language Quarterly. Along with her academic writing, she has also published literary translations from Arabic; her translation with the author of Sinan Antoon’s I’jaam: An Iraqi Rhapsody is available from City Lights Books, and translations of Faraj Bayrakdar’s poems will appear in A Dove in Free Flight (Upset Press, Ed. Ammiel Alcalay and Shareah Taleghani). She currently serves as Director of Middle East and North African Studies at Northwestern. Stranger Fictions: A History of the Novel in Translation (Cornell University Press) is her first book.