Sociology of literature, sociology of translation: The reception of Irène Némirovsky's<i>Suite française</i>in France and Britain

Abstract

This article uses Irène Némirovsky's posthumously published novel Suite française (2004 [in French] and 2006 [in English]) as a case study to investigate the ways in which the market for translated literature functions in Britain today. The article raises methodological questions relating to the analysis of the function of the translated literary text in the target culture, proposing that work in the sociology of translation should be brought into dialogue with research into contemporary publishing, and that questions raised by polysystems theory remain relevant to such a dialogue. It suggests that an analysis of the reception of the translated text in the target culture should pay attention to paratextual elements and to modern marketing strategies in order to assess how translated fiction is currently presented to the British reading public. The example of Suite française demonstrates that, under certain commercial and cultural conditions, translated fiction in English can become a bestseller.