Publishing Francophone African Literature in Translation: Towards a Relational Account of Postcolonial Book History
Publishing Francophone African Literature in Translation: Towards a Relational Account of Postcolonial Book History
James Currey, editor at Heinemann for over twenty years, devotes a fascinating chapter to translations of African writing in French in Africa writes back: the African writers series and the launch of African literature (2008). This paper points to the need for a fuller comparative account of early publishing strategies for ‘African literatures’ in English and in French, by considering the production of translated fiction from French in this series. A case study of the global publishing contexts of the translation of Cheikh Hamidou Kane's classic text L’Aventure ambiguë then traces the structuring forces at work in the literary field across francophone and anglophone sub-Saharan Africa. Archival research, interviews with the author and his publishers, and printed and digital paratext, show the precarious and contingent positioning of this translation since its first appearance in the Black Orpheus journal in 1963 to its most recent ebook edition.
Keywords: translation, publishing, book history, Heinemann African Writers Series, Cheikh Hamidou Kane, rights and royalties
Liverpool Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
