Open AccessTranslating the transition: the translator-detective in Post-Soviet fiction
Author(s) -
Brian James Baer
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
linguistica antverpiensia new series - themes in translation studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2295-5739
DOI - 10.52034/lanstts.v4i.139
Subject(s) - russian literature , intelligentsia , detective fiction , hero , punishment (psychology) , motif (music) , transition (genetics) , literature , art , aesthetics , law , psychology , political science , social psychology , biochemistry , chemistry , politics , gene
This article explores the ways in which the figure of the translator-detective in contemporary Russian literature functions to express and neutralize a range of fears and anxieties engendered by the post-Soviet transition. Tracing the roots of the motif of the translator in Russian literature back to F. M. Dostoevsky ’s Crime and Punishment, the paper then examines the translator-hero in the detective fiction of the best-selling contemporary authors Aleksandra Marinina, Boris Akunin, Dar’ia Dontsova, and Polina Dashkova. Representatives of the embattled Russian intelligentsia, their translator-detectives embody resistance to mindless cultural borrowing from the West.