Can These Bones Live?

"In this pioneering study, translation is a matter of life and death .... In Brodzki's hands, such a broad view of translation proves extremely productive in the service of hermeneutics, applied to a range of American, European, and African text, fictional and autobiographical, whose historical frames coincide with late modernity and post modernity. Her selections are marked by or reverberate with echoes of catastrophic events." ~Eva C. Karpinski, Biography.

"Brodzki convincingly argues for the 'subversive and transformative power' of translation. Drawing on Benjamin via Derrida, Can These Bones Live? is a profound study of the problematic relationship between loss and survival, given that texts, cultures, and even memory itself must in one sense cease to exist if they are successfully to undergo the redemptive act of historical or cultural renewal." ~In Other Words

"Bella Brodzki's compelling and wide-ranging book represents an important contribution to current work on translation theory. With illuminating discussions of creatively chosen examples ranging from slave narratives and postcolonial novels to holocaust survivor stories, Brodzki shows translation to be closely associated with questions of trauma, cultural memory, and survival." ~David Damrosch, Columbia University

"This is a book that opens up some new perspectives and lets a breath of fresh air into comparative criticism." ~Translation Studies