In Imaginary Homelands, Salman Rushdie famously argued for the power of translation: “The word ‘translation’ comes, etymologically, from the Latin for ‘bearing across.’ Having been borne across the world, we are translated men. It is normally supposed that something always gets lost in translation; I cling, obstinately, to the notion that something can also be gained” (17). Rebecca Walkowitz's Born Translated: The Contemporary Novel in an Age of World Literature is a full-throated defense of this idea of gain through translation. Arguing against commonplace assumptions that literary works should prize authenticity of voice over circuits of exchange, uniqueness over influence and collaboration, and finished objects over process, Walkowitz collates a sizable body of work in contemporary fiction that values translation as medium and foundation instead. Doing so necessitates challenging the common perception that serious readers do not read in translation as well as the conventions of close...
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