In:Contexts, Subtexts and Pretexts: Literary translation in Eastern Europe and Russia
Edited by Brian James Baer
[Benjamins Translation Library 89] 2011
► pp. 265–276
Russian dystopia in exile
Translating Zamiatin and Voinovich
Published online: 13 April 2011
https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.89.21ols
https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.89.21ols
This chapter describes how two Russian dystopian novels, Evgenii Zamiatin’s We (1921) and Vladimir Voinovich’s Moscow 2042 (1987) reached their readers through translations. The analysis centers on similarities and differences in the presentation of the dystopian world in modern and post-modern discourses and their translations into English. The author argues that dystopia, a genre well established in the Western literary tradition, encounters many more difficulties in reaching the readership of the target culture in its postmodern form.
