Table of Contents
Introduction
Cultural Translation in Contemporary African Migrant Literature
1. Mapping the Terrain
Defining Cultural Translation
The manipulation of language
Contact zones, homes and destinations
Contexts of departure
2. Strategic Nostalgia, Islam and Cultural Translation in Leila Aboulela's The Translator (1999) and Coloured Lights (2001)
Strategic nostalgia
Orientalism, Islamism and supplementary spaces
Politics of language and nostalgic memories
Translating back
3. Translation, Knowledge and the Reader in Jamal Mahjoub's Wings of Dust (1994) and The Carrier (1998)
Translation's threat to authority: "All knowledge in these dark times is dangerous"
Exile and madness: a portrait of two translators: Sharif and Shibshib
Copernicus, carriers and the translation of scientific knowledge
4. Mimicry or Translation: Storytelling and Migrant Identity in Abdulrazak Gurnah's Admiring Silence (1996) and By the Sea (2001)
Migrant storytelling and cultural translation
Mimicry or the refusal to translate in Admiring Silence: "Beware of the stories you read or tell"
Cultural translation in By the Sea: "Stories can transform enemies into friends"
"Stories can infect a system, or illuminate a world": Conclusion
5. Ambivalent Translation between Individual and Community
Moyez Vassanji's No New Land (1991) and Amriika (1999)
Cultural translation and the threat of community
Migration and difficult translations in No New Land
Migration, a translation into other galaxies? Amriika
Neither traps nor galaxies: Conclusion
Conclusion
Cultural Translation and the Troubling of Locations of Identity
Oppositionality
Reciprocity
Storytelling and the Reader