Reading Novels Translingually. Twenty-First-Century Case Studies

Reading Novels 
Translingually
Tw e n t y - F i r s t - C e n t u r y 
C a s e  S t u d i e s

Studies in Comparative Literature and Intellectual History
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B O S T O N
2 0 2 4
J u l i e  H a n s e n
Reading Novels 
Translingually
Tw e n t y - F i r s t - C e n t u r y 
C a s e  S t u d i e s

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Hansen, Julie, 1970- author. 
Title: Reading novels translingually : twenty-first-century case studies / Julie Hansen. 
Description: Boston : Academic Studies Press, 2024. | Series: Studies in comparative literature 
and intellectual history | Includes bibliographical references. 
Identifiers: LCCN 2023040333 (print) | LCCN 2023040334 (ebook) | ISBN 9781644698778 
(hardback) | ISBN 9798887193861 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9798887193878 (epub) 
Subjects: LCSH: Fiction--History and criticism | Multilingualism and literature. | LCGFT: 
Literary criticism. | Case studies. 
Classification: LCC PN3338 .H36 2024 (print) | LCC PN3338 (ebook) | 
DDC 809.3--dc23/eng/20230914 
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023040333
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023040334
Сopyright © 2024, Academic Studies Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN 9781644698778 (hardback)
ISBN 9798887193861 (Adobe PDF)
ISBN 9798887193878 (ePub)
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Book design by Lapiz Digital Services.
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permission from the publisher or as permitted by law

For Christian and Peder

Contents
Acknowledgments    
ix
Note on Transliteration   
x
Chapter 1: Introduction: Translingual Reading
1
Chapter 2: Implied Readers in the Translingual Text: 
The Case of Olga Grushin’s The Dream Life of Sukhanov
21
Chapter 3: Translingual Protagonists Go Global
64
Chapter 4: The Translingual Narrator and Language Gaps: 
The Case of Zinaida Lindén’s Many Countries Ago
83
Chapter 5: The Literary Translator as Reader: 
The Case of Rabih Alameddine’s An Unnecessary Woman
100
Chapter 6: Suspicion and the Suspension of Disbelief in 
Multilingual Fiction: The Case of a Nordic Thriller
124
Chapter 7: Code-Switching and Language-Mixing in 
Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace
137
Chapter 8: Reading Between Medieval and Modern: 
The Case of Eugene Vodolazkin’s Laurus
154
Chapter 9: Concluding Remarks 
179
Bibliography
182 
Index
202

Acknowledgments
 
This book has taken shape slowly and benefited greatly along the way from 
exchange with several specialists on literary multilingualism and translation. 
For over a decade, I have enjoyed scholarly conversations and collaboration on 
these topics with a number of colleagues, including Helena Bodin, Zakhar Ishov, 
Steven Kellman, Natasha Lvovich, Charles Sabatos, Karine Åkerman Sarkisian, 
Eric Sellin†, Marja Sorvari, Adrian Wanner, and Susanna Witt. I am also grateful to the network on Slavic translation and translingualism studies founded at 
the 2014 Uppsala conference “Translation in Russian Contexts: Transcultural, 
Translingual, and Transdisciplinary Points of Departure,” which I had the pleasure of co-organizing with Susanna Witt. The network’s panel streams at European and North American conferences have provided good testing grounds for 
ideas developed in this book. Such collegial cooperation is one of the real pleasures of academic life.
The idea for chapter 7 arose while reading War and Peace together with 
colleagues and students in a seminar series organized by Torsten Pettersson, 
professor of literature at Uppsala University, during Spring Term 2019. Torsten 
and I subsequently co-organized the online symposium “Havoc and Healing: 
Insights into Human Action in Tolstoy and Dostoevsky,” at which Tolstoy scholars Karin Beck and Donna Orwin offered suggestions that helped me develop 
my analysis of translingual elements in War and Peace.
Another source of inspiration was the 2019 symposium “Flerspråkig litteratur och läsaren” (Multilingual Literature and the Reader) at the Baltic Centre 
for Writers and Translators in Visby, Sweden, funded by a grant from the Bank 
of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation and organized by Helena Bodin, Lena 
Pasternak, Julia Tidigs, and myself. This project culminated in a special issue of 
the journal Edda: Scandinavian Journal of Literary Research (107, no. 3 [2020]), 
edited by Julia Tidigs and Helena Bodin. My contribution, entitled “En flerspråkig värld på svenska: Språkliga diskrepanser i Zinaida Lindéns roman För 
många länder sedan,” has been translated and adapted for chapter 4 of this book. 
Earlier versions of parts of chapter 2 appeared in the journals Modern 
Language Review (“Making Sense of the Translingual Text: Russian Wordplay, 
Names, and Cultural Allusions in Olga Grushin’s The Dream Life of Sukhanov, 
Modern Language Review 107, no. 2 [2012]) and Translation and Interpreting 

Acknowledgments
x
Studies (“Translating the Translingual Text: Olga Grushin’s Anglophone Novel 
The Dream Life of Sukhanov in Russian,” Translation and Interpreting Studies 11, 
no. 1 [2016]). An earlier version of chapter 3 was published in Interventions: 
International Journal of Postcolonial Studies (“Transcending the Vernacular in Fictional Portraits of Translators,” Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial 
Studies 22, no. 3 [2020]). Chapter 7 is based on an article I wrote for a special 
issue, edited by Steven G. Kellman, of Polylinguality and Transcultural Practices 
(“Reading War and Peace as a Translingual Novel,” Polylinguality and Transcultural Practices 16, no. 4 [2019]). I am grateful to the editors and anonymous 
peer reviewers for their detailed suggestions, and to the journals for allowing me 
to adapt and incorporate this material here. 
I wish to thank Thomas Arentzen, Jan-Erik Bergstrand, Ulla Birgegård, Jan 
Bruun-Petersen, Annika Granström, Cecilia Gustavsson, Zakhar Ishov, Torsten 
Pettersson, Charles Sabatos, Valentyna Savchyn, Eva-Britta Ståhl, and Milan 
Vukanšinović for reading and commenting on chapter drafts. Lisa C. Hayden, 
who has brilliantly translated Eugene Vodolazkin’s novel Laurus into English, 
generously shared with me her insights on its language. I also wish to thank the 
members of Skrivjuntan, who helped this book along with good company and 
encouragement at our regular writing sessions. The Department of Modern 
Languages at Uppsala University has generously funded the open access publication of this book.
Fortunate as I am to have inspiring scholars from other disciplines as 
friends, I wish to thank in particular Karl Axelsson, Alexandra Borg, Camilla 
Flodin, Martin Kragh, Thomas Oles, Gudrun Persson, Antony Smith, and Mary 
Jo White for stimulating and encouraging conversations while I’ve been working on this book.
This book is dedicated to my sons, Christian and Peder, who know what it 
means to live translingually.
 
 
Note on Transliteration
The modified Library of Congress system of transliteration is used in bibliographic references. This is also the case throughout the text, with the exception of Russian author names with conventional English spellings. The English 
translations of quoted passages are my own unless noted otherwise.