Writing It Twice: Self-Translation and the Making of a World Literature in French (Northwestern University Press, 2015).
Reviews
“Sara Kippur makes a lively and persuasive case for self-translation as an activity with critical edge. World literature and translation studies won’t be the same: they will be all the richer for taking account of doubled writing.” —Sherry Simon, Concordia University, author of Translating Montreal
“If, according to the Italian adage, translation is betrayal, auto-translation is a peculiar form of self-abuse. However, Writing It Twice, Sara Kippur’s scintillating contribution to the burgeoning field of translation studies, makes a compelling case for the centrality of translation to the existence and performance of world literature. And she demonstrates how authors who recreate their texts in another language offer tonic challenges to assumptions about originality, authenticity, and the boundaries between author and text…Her lambent case studies of Nancy Huston, Raymond Federman, Jorge Semprun, and Hector Bianciotti constitute vibrant and essential reading for anyone interested in the fertile nexus of language, literature, culture, and self." —Steven G. Kellman, Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Texas at San Antonio and author of The Translingual Imagination
“Writing It Twice is a timely, astute, and engaging study of several important modern and contemporary writers who have chosen to translate some (or almost all) of their important works into a second language, whether from their native tongue to their adopted language, or vice versa. It is elegantly written, cogently argued, and critically sophisticated... This is an original work by a sensitive and thoughtful critic." —Richard Golsan, author of French Writers and the Politics of Complicity: Crises of Democracy in the 1940s and 1990s
“This book makes a huge contribution to self-translation and translingual studies, and challenges us to think about world literature from the perspective of its capacity for ‘engaging distinct language publics.’” —Jacqueline Dutton, French Studies
“Kippur’s study is inspiring in that it places renewed importance on the fictional writer and the bilingual intellectual.” —Claire Kew, The French Review
Being Contemporary: French Literature, Culture, and Politics Today (Liverpool University Press, 2016).
Reviews
“Lia Brozgal and Sara Kippur’s edited volume is impressive in its scope and in the intellectual level of its essays...providing useful theoretical concepts and models of thought that other scholars can productively apply to their own areas and objects of study.”
—David Petterson, H-France Review
“This volume is, therefore, a foundational consideration of the academic’s position in time as well as a fitting tribute to Susan Suleiman, one of our field’s most influential, humane, and engaged scholars.”
—Kathryn Kleppinger, Bulletin of Francophone Postcolonial Studies
“As a book exploring how Susan Rubin Suleiman’s thought continues to orient and inspire research in a number of disciplines, Being Contemporary is nothing short of excellent.”
—Lucas Hollister, French Review