Klaus Kaindl and Karlheinz Spitzl, eds. Transfiction. Research into the realities of translation fiction. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, John Benjamins, 2014, 373 p.

As the editors state, the 22 essays that comprise the anthology are derived from papers delivered at the 1^st Conference on Fictional Translators and Interpreters in Literature and Film, held at the University of Vienna’s Centre for Translation Studies, September 14-17, 2011. Klaus Kaindl’s fine preface provides a definition for the term transfiction: “the introduction and (increased) use of translation-related phenomena in fiction” (p. 4). He also gives the reader a useful overview of the history of the appearance of translators or interpreters as figures in literature—from the 18^th to the 21^st century—and in cinema. Karlheinz Spitzl, for his part, justifies the arrangement of the essays into four sections, which the editors call episodes, titled: “Entering theoretical territories,” “Travelling through intercultural space,” “Experiencing agency and action,” and “Carrying function into effect.” The sections are equally interesting in that they weave together seamlessly discussions on literary theory, philosophy, translation theory, and the practices of translation and interpretation. Additionally, Spitzl writes a concise summary for each of the book’s chapters, as well as an interesting concluding comment on the complex relationships among fiction, nonfiction, and translation. The number and variety of novels, short stories, and films analyzed in the collection’s chapters are quite impressive, as is the geographic and linguistic scope of the texts studied. The materials examined by the book’s contributors (indicated in parentheses) are produced by authors and filmmakers from Africa (Karlheinz Spitzl, Alice Leal), English Canada (Sabine Strümper-Krobb), France (Dörte Andres, Nitsa Ben-Ari, Brian James Baer, Sigrid Kupsch-Losereit), Germany (Renate Resch, Daniela Beuren), Italy (Giovanni Nadiani), Latin America (Rosemary Arrojo), Québec (Klaus Kaindl, Patricia Godbout), Russia (Natalia Olshanskaya), Scotland (Michelle Woods), Serbia (Marija Todorova), the United Kingdom (Salam Al-Mahadin, Alice Cesarini, Ingrid Kurz), and the United States (Fotini Apostolou, Waltraud Kolb). Also represented in the monograph is the field of science-fiction (Monika Wozniak). The collected contributions illustrate effectively both the popularity and the global reach of the motif of the translator and the interpreter in fiction and cinema. Equally diversified are the historical and social contexts within which the characters operate, that is, from post-apartheid South Africa, and Holocaust Germany, to Israel in 1948, and the European Union. In these works, the figures of the translator and interpreter are cast in a variety of roles, ranging from minor character to protagonist. In her contribution, Ben-Ari offers the reader a very useful typology of four types of novels that contain representations of translators and interpreters: “The first type comprises belated post-colonial novels from the periphery […]. The second type is that of Post-structural novels where fiction is but an excuse for representing intertext and ‘death of the Author’ theories […]. The third type comprises best-sellers that have discovered the advantages of using the interpreter as protagonist […]. The fourth and last type comprises parodies that can no longer take the subject seriously […]” (p. 114-116). What is especially interesting is the fact that many issues that have come to the fore in translation theory discussions are explored in a fictional, rather than a strictly theoretical, context. These include such questions as fidelity, explored in, for example, Kurz’s chapter, “On the (in)fidelity of (fictional) interpreters;” the relationship between source text and target text, found in Apostolou’s essay “Walter Benjamin revisited;” between interpretation and translation, which is treated in Al-Mahadin’s “Language, essence and silence;” the public’s perception of the role of the translator and interpreter, as in Spitzl’s chapter “Taking care of the stars” and Olshanskaya’s “From a faltering bystander to a spiritual leader: Re-thinking the role of the translators in Russia,” and, finally, the translator’s or …